DISCOVER
THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

What is there about the word gold? It has the power to set hearts racing and to cause otherwise sane people to abandon job, hearth, home, and family to rush off to an unknown place based on hearsay and rumor.

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Vial of Gold; © Jane A. Sawyer

Clearly Sam Brannan was a man with vision who knew how to take advantage of a money-making potential! And as it happened, Mr. Brannan was the first to become a millionaire as a result of the California Gold Rush - but he did it by "mining the miners" not by mining the gold!

Sutter's Mill, 1850!

It all started on a dreary day in January 1848 - the 24th, to be exact.

James Marshall was the foreman of John Sutter's lumber mill project along the South Fork of the American River.

While inspecting the tailrace (along with oft-forgotten Peter Wimmer), Marshall spotted what looked like gold pieces in the water.

He collected the samples and took them to Sutter for testing - not only had Marshall discovered gold, but Mr. Sutter determined it to be gold of the highest quality - "at least 23 carats".

Word spread and before long, masses of people from all over the world were forging new routes to the California goldfields in the hopes of getting to California as quickly as they could and acquiring overnight riches.

In spite of John Sutter's efforts to
keep the discovery of gold a secret, the California Gold Rush was officially on!

You may be surprised to learn that Sutter didn't want word of Marshall's find to get around, but he had his reasons and they probably were different than you would expect.

He wasn't trying to keep all the gold for himself... Sutter's California plans had always included building an agricultural empire for himself. In fact, the lumber from the mill where the first gold was discovered was needed for Sutter's planned expansion of his flour mill.

Sutter needed men to work the mills; he didn't want his plans ruined by a bunch of gold-grubbing prospectors overrunning his land in their efforts to get rich quick.

But even in the scantily-populated California of 1848, it was impossible to keep such a find under wraps.

Within two weeks of the discovery, the cat had of the
bag: from the workers at the lumber mill word spread to the men working at Sutter's Fort and - as Sutter had feared would happen - his men began to abandon their posts in favor of the easy riches they envisioned finding along the river.

The earliest gold-seekers were those prospectors who came during the summer of 1848 - the Argonauts. They came first from Sutter's Fort, then from San Francisco (the California Star - a newspaper owned by Sam Brannan - called San Francisco a ghost town the day after Brannan's excursion through The City with his vial of gold and provocative cry), then from the world.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!;
© Nicolas Raymond

By summer's end prospectors were arriving from outside California. They came from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, Mexico, South America... Everyone was finding gold, they were finding it easily, and there was lots of it!

Word continued to spread. Nearly 90,000 newcomers from all over the world had come to California - most seeking gold - by the time 1949 ended. These new prospectors came to be call 49ers, a term that was derived from the year 1849 - the year most of them arrived - and the California Gold Country was born!

Sutter's Fort - known as New Helvetia at the time - became the jumping off place for getting to the goldfields. But how did they get to Sutter's Fort in the first place?

• They either came Overland by Covered Wagon, arriving more or less directly at Sutter's Fort, or...

• They arrived by ship after traveling Around the Horn and landed in San Francisco,

• Those who found themselves in San Francisco still had to make their way to Sutter's Fort by way of the Sacramento River

Gold Panning

Once they arrived at the docks
of Sacramento, these Argonauts and 49ers rushed off willy-nilly without a clue in the world about how to find the gold they were seeking!

Most of them didn't even know what it looked like!

But they learned by trial and error, and from each other as they followed the Gold Rush Trail.

They learned what to look for
and where to look for it.

They learned how to pan for gold and they invented new gold mining techniques.

Some became rich, others were broken by the experience.

But regardless of its effect on individual people, the California Gold Rush changed the world as people had know it, and it was changed forever!

Visit Old Sacramento State Historic Park over the Labor Day weekend when it holds its annual Gold Rush Days - it's a wonderful way to see what Sacramento was like in the mid-1800s!

Continue to Discover the California Gold Rush here:

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