By RITA FERRANDINO
Staff Writer

In 1848, during the building of Sutter Sawmill in San Francisco, gold was spotted in the water, triggering the Gold Rush and allowing women an opportunity to secure greater rights.

Cooperstown Central School's Amie Rowland, who just completed her sophomore year, chose this momentous occasion as the subject of her National History Day Competition project. She came in third in the nation, though a regents test prevented her from being present at the ceremony at the University of Maryland.

Her exhibit consists of three panels, including a timeline of pivotal events during the Gold Rush. This year's theme was Frontiers in History, and Rowland chose the Gold Rush because of the massive strides made freely by women during that time.

"Women began to arrive in 1848 and continued to arrive during the fifties," said Rowland. "Men wanted to attract women out there so they made more equal laws to benefit women. There were equal property laws. Women could initiate divorce and invest money separate from their husbands. They couldn't do any of that back east."

After the gold was discovered, the owner of the property asked that it be kept quiet, Rowland said, but as such secrets do, it got spilled, sparking a massive arrival of crowds to California.

Rowland said that people arrived so quickly in San Francisco that safety concerns were often overlooked. Dwellings were made of canvas in the absence of wood and time for solid construction, and fires leveled San Francisco on three separate occasions.

"While men were mining, women created fire companies and took care of the general safety issues. The economy was set up in a way that encouraged women to participate. And they ended up making more money than the men because the men were primarily miners while the women set up boarding houses and made a lot of money. So women broke political, social and economic frontiers during this time."

Women also established churches, theaters, schools and orphanages, Rowland said, which would normally have been done by men.

District superintendent Mary Jo McPhail said, "We're really proud of Amy and we're looking forward to her future opportunities in this competition."

Dottie Gebbia, a judge of the junior division of the competition, said she's in awe of the quality of the work done by the students and that she learns a lot from being a judge.

"It's an honor," she said.

Her exhibit also contained a television set with fragments of two PBS documentaries, "The Speck of the Future,' and "The Gold Rush," shown during the competition. Last year she won an award for Outstanding Entry in New York State in the National History Day Competition. Cooperstown's Arby Schlather also placed first in the state competition.