The AI Boomtowns 🏡

Gold!

Long before modern currencies or financial systems existed, it served as money, an ornament, and a symbol of power.

Empires hoarded it, wars were fought over it, and trade routes were shaped by its pursuit. Over time, it became embedded in banking systems, national reserves, and global trade, leading to a rush to mine as much gold as possible.

In fact, this frenzied demand for gold triggered the largest human migration, and it was merely an accident.

In January 1848, James W. Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill at Sutter’s Mill, noticed a few unusually bright flecks in the mill’s tailrace. To his surprise, they were gold. What began as an ordinary construction site quickly became something else. Attempts to keep the discovery quiet failed, and within months the news spread across the United States and then the world.

What followed was one of the fastest and largest economic mobilizations in modern history. Capital, labor, tools, ships, and investment moved toward California. Supply chains stretched across oceans, carrying everything needed to sustain the mining of the gold, and the economic geography of the American West transformed almost overnight.

It came to be called the California Gold Rush. And one place that was at the center of it all was San Francisco.

Before the gold rush, San Francisco was a small, overlooked port with a few hundred residents and little economic importance.

But the gold changed everything. Almost overnight, tents went up along the waterfront. Wooden shacks turned into hotels, stores, saloons, gambling halls, and makeshift homes. Ships crowded the harbor. People poured in faster than the city could keep up. In 1849, as gold fever swept across the country, San Francisco’s population had exploded to roughly 28,000.

San Francisco transformed into a boomtown!

Just as gold once drew people, capital, and supply chains to San Francisco, data centers are now pulling investment, workers, and infrastructure to unexpected corners of America, transforming quiet towns and rural communities into AI infrastructure hubs.

For much of its history, Umatilla existed on the margins of American attention, yet it played a crucial role in the nation’s military infrastructure.

During World War II, the town became home to a vast military depot. It was originally built to store and maintain supplies such as blankets, uniforms, and ammunition for the war effort. Over time, its mission expanded to include far more dangerous materials, and Umatilla became one of the few installations in the United States that stored chemical weapons.

During the Cold War, that role deepened. By 1962, the Umatilla depot was storing roughly 12% of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile.

When the Cold War ended, the chemical depot was decommissioned, leaving Umatilla with something rare: vast tracts of cleared land, proximity to major power lines, and access to the Columbia River.

The kind of environment where AI takes root. And it did — not just in Umatilla, but across northeastern Oregon, where large-scale data center campuses have taken shape. The region is now the epicenter of one of the largest and most capital-intensive AI infrastructure build-outs in U.S. history.

Oregon's rise as an AI data center hub didn't happen by accident. It was the result of a rare alignment of cheap power, favorable tax policies, and abundant land.

This is a preview from a chapter in our latest eBook, BuildOut AI 2026—a comprehensive report on the supply chain of physical commodities powering the AI boom.