The Gold Discovery When James W. Marshall picked up those first few flakes of gold from the tailrace of the sawmill he was building for John Sutter in 1848, he touched off the greatest gold rush the world has ever known. American westward migration changed from a trickle to a flood. The idealistic young republic that had been gradually expanding westward from the Atlantic seaboard realized its "manifest destiny" in one swoop and suddenly became a major presence on the Pacific Rim. Native American cultures that had lasted for thousands of years in California were shattered and destroyed. At the same time, a much neglected, 300-year-old Mexican province that had remained pastoral for decades suddenly became a proud new state in a fast-growing new nation. A coastal village on bay mudflats turned into one of the world's great seaports. A makeshift landing on the Sacramento River became the base for a transcontinental railroad and center of a great inland agricultural empire. California gold helped support the infant Mormon economy in Utah. More than $80,000 went through Brigham Young's gold accounts and into the Mormon mint in 1848-1851, and thousands more dollars in private hands paid for goods and supplies. California gold helped finance and possibly even precipitate the Civil War. On the other hand, the gold discovery destroyed John Sutter's ambitious dreams of creating an empire. Marshall was building the sawmill primarily to supply lumber for New Helvetia, Sutter's great fiefdom in the Sacramento Valley. But Sutter's Fort and all of Sutter's other holdings were soon completely overrun by the swarms of eager gold seekers who came in ever-increasing numbers over the plains, around the Horn, and across Panama, seizing whatever they needed in their head long pursuit of instant wealth. The Date? No one knows with absolute certainty exactly what happened on that crisp winter day in 1848. It did not seem like such a big thing to the men on the spot. The two who were keeping diaries at the time seemed more concerned with the weather and their grievances against Mrs. Wimmer, the cook. The gold discovery was a welcome diversion, but it did not keep them from finishing their work on the mill. Nor did it keep most of the Mormons among them from heading home to Salt Lake City as soon as the Sierra passes were clear of snow. Later, as the discovery took on the dimensions of a great historical event, the various participants remembered it and their own roles - differently, as witnesses often do. Charles Beneath died a hero's death fighting Indians in 1855 in Oregon. His tombstone there proclaims him the true gold discoverer. Mrs. Wimmer felt her husband was at least a co-discoverer with Marshall, and one story says the metal was really found by the Wimmer children. There is even a tale that Marshall's little daughter started it all by bringing a shiny pebble to her doting dad even though Marshall never married and had no children. With the evidence sifted and ressifted, today most historians agree that Marshall was the discoverer. The precise date? Almost certainly January 24, although testimony can be found in support of many different dates ranging from Christmas through mid-February. Marshall himself gave conflicting dates. It was not as though Marshall stepped out of his cabin door that morning and beheld the millrace aglow with gold. The gold was there, but Marshall had to look for it. And he seems to have already had some idea that there was gold to be found. He had only a smattering of geology from his school days in New Jersey, but some remember him remarking on the presence of "blossom" (quartz outcroppings) in the surrounding countryside. This was not surprising. California was considered rich in minerals, and gold had been found in various places by Spanish missionaries and others. There had been minor excitement at Placerita Canyon in Southern California a few years earlier. Marshall even seems to have suspected that there was gold in the millrace at least a day before the actual discovery. One of his work men remembered that he borrowed a tin plate that Sunday afternoon "to do some prospecting." Marshall and his crew, of course, were not on a gold hunting expedition. They were trying to build a saw mill, and they had it well on the way to completion except for the tailrace, which was too shallow to carry water fast enough past the wheel that powered the saw. The solution was to dig the tailrace during the day and to let water pour through at night to scour the bottom. This did the job, but it also turned the ditch into a giant sluicebox with cracks in the exposed bedrock serving as riffles to catch the gold that washed from the loosened gravel of the banks. Not Just Any Monday That Monday morning Marshall ordered the water shut off especially tight, with leaves and dirt and saw dust packed around the headgate at the upper end of the ditch. Then he walked down the tailrace below the mill wheel, and in a crevice in the smooth granite bedrock under a few inches of water, he found the dull bit of yellow that started it all. He could not be sure it was gold. Blotite, or "fool's gold," has a yellow shine and is common in Sierra Nevada streams, as is the similar iron pyrite. Marshall was already known as a man who was "notional." He did not want to be embarrassed. He hit a piece of the metal with a rock. The flake bent, but did not shatter as fool's gold would. He picked up several pieces. It was most small flakes and grains, the largest "about half the size of a pea." He made a little dent in the crown of his battered hat to hold the few bits of yellow metal he had found, and walked back up to the mill. "Hey, boys, by God I believe I've found a gold mine," he is remembered as saying. The others were skeptical. None of them had seen raw gold. It did not look as bright as the $5 gold piece Azariah Smith had in his pocket. James Brown remembered testing a sample with his teeth, and trying to melt some on the tip of a shovel held in a hot manzanita-wood fire. The men went back with Marshall to the place where he had found the gold. After a little searching they began picking up bits themselves with fingers and pocketknives. Later that morning they tried other tests. Charles Bennett remembered pounding out one of the pieces on an anvil. The cook dropped a nugget in her soap pot. It did not tarnish. "This day some kind of mettle was found in the tailrace that looks like goald," Henry Bigler noted in his diary for Monday, January 24. Back at the Fort Four days later, when it was time to go down to Sutter's Fort for supplies, Marshall wrapped some of the gold in a handkerchief and took it to Sutter. Huddled in a back room, the two men looked up the subject of gold in Sutter's well-worn encyclopedia. They tested the sample in nitric acid from Sutter's medical kit. Following the encyclopedia instructions, they balanced the gold against some silver coins on a scale, then immersed the scale pans in water to determine their metal's specific gravity. It was almost pure gold. Sutter's reaction was one of extreme caution. The fort's log book to which others had access - only says for that day: "Mr. Marshall arrived this morning on important business." According to the log, Marshall went back up to the mill the next morning, though in one recollection Sutter says that Marshall was so bitten by the gold bug that he could not wait for morning and set out for the mill after dark in the rain Sutter himself did not get up to the mill for another four days. By then the men had done a little prospecting and picked up more than $ 100 worth of gold, according to Bigler's diary. Sutter was impressed but worried. He would have welcomed a modest find, as a means to improve his perpetual cash flow problems and to erase the massive debts that continually threatened his empire. On the other hand, easy gold that any man could pick out of the rocks with a pocketknife would make it difficult to recruit labor for the work he really wanted done: building a gristmill to grind his flour, and constructing other farming and manufacturing facilities that would finally make New Helvetia self-sufficient and even profitable. For that matter, though the workmen had agreed to share with Marshall whatever gold they found, Sutter and Marshall had no legal claim to the Coloma area, not even to the land on which the mill was located. Sutter hurriedly negotiated an agreement with the Indians in exchange for a promise of clothing and other items, but the agreement fell through when Colonel Richard B. Mason, the U.S. military governor in Monterey, refused to accept it. Mason maintained that the Indians had no title to the land, which as he saw it now belonged to the United States by right of conquest. Shh, Let's keep it a secret. The only hope was to keep the discovery quiet. Sutter and Marshall swore the mill workers to secrecy, but, of course, word got |out. When Jacob Wittmer took two wagons up to the mill on February 9, the Wimmer children apparently told him of the gold. |When he scoffed at the story, it was confirmed by Mrs. Wimmer and the other adults. Wittmer brought the news back to the fort, |and even used some of the gold to buy a bottle of brandy at the fort store. The store operator sent word to his partner in San |Francisco, the enterprising Sam Brannan. |Henry Bigler shared the news with three of his fellow Mormons who were working on the new flour mill near Sutter's Fort. They |visited Coloma and then on the way back to Sutter's Fort prospected at a spot that shortly became the rich diggings of Mormon |Island. |On February 10, Sutter himself wrote his impatient creditor, General Mariano Vallejo: "My sawmill is finished and I have made a discovery of a gold mine ... which is extraordinarily rich." As the word seeped out, Sutter was soon openly telling visitors to the fort about the discovery. The first newspaper mention was in the Californian for March 15, a small item on an inside page: "GOLD MINE FOUND. In the newly made raceway of the sawmill recently erected by Captain Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars worth up to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time. California, no doubt, is rich in mineral wealth; great chances here for scientific capitalists. Gold has been found in almost every part of the country." The rival California Star-Sam Brannan's paper- noted it about as casually a few days later. Charles Bennett, who had been present at the discovery, was sent to Monterey to carry the official word to the military governor, Colonel Mason. On the way, Bennett showed off his gold and helped spread the story. Still there was no great interest, though a few curiosity seekers began to wander up to the mill. Most people considered it a hoax, or at best a thing of little importance; another of Sutter's tall tales. Henry Bigler and his fellows continued to work at the mill, prospecting only on "Sundays, holidays, and odd hours" as Marshall allowed them. Digging with pocketknives and "panning" with some tightly woven Indian baskets, they picked up a few ounces, first in the millrace, then along the river itself. They were joined by a few visitors from the fort and the gristmill, and men from some of the ranches that were by then scattered around the Sacramento Valley. Isaac Humphrey, who had mined for gold in Georgia, met Bennett in San Francisco and came up to the mill on April I with a rocker, probably the first piece of relatively sophisticated mining equipment to be introduced. Spreading the News Sam Brannan decided to check out the reports for himself. He had come to California by sailing ship with a following of Mormon settlers and then stayed on to try various business enterprises. He visited his partner at the Sutter's Fort store and went on to Mormon Island where the Mormon miners showed him their gold-and gave him the Church's tithe. Convinced he was on to something big, Brannan established a store at Mormon Island and another at Coloma. Then he hurried back to San Francisco where he rushed down the wharf waving a bottle of gold dust and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" Or so the story goes. One way or another, his tale emptied the town. In a few days one eyewitness reported that no more than twenty men were left in the whole city. Monterey's alcalde, Walter Colton, sent a man to check out the rumors. The man returned with his pockets full of gold. Shortly afterward Colton wrote, "the blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off to the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter." Sutter tried to find ways to profit from the discovery, but his agricultural enterprises soon began to fall apart. He got his wheat harvested, but there was no one to thresh it. The stone wheels of his new grist mill never produced any flour. Hides rotted in his tannery vats. Squatters camped in his fields and vandalized the fort itself for boards and useful bits of ironwork. At one point Sutter complained that even the bells had been stolen from his fort. The Gold Seekers At first the only people who came to look for gold were men from the coastal towns and ranches, sailors whose ships had brought cargo to San Francisco, or soldiers loosed in the aftermath of the Mexican War. Only the best equipped brought tents. Most settled in brush shelters or just laid out their blankets On the ground. Marshall tried to keep them away from the mill and his own claims, directing them up and down the river and to tributary streams. Gold seemed to be everywhere, and diggings soon spread to the other forks of the American and then to other streams and watersheds-the Feather, the Yuba, and the Cosumnes. As military governor of California, Colonel Richard B. Mason and his adjutant, Lt.William Tecumseh Sherman of later Civil War fame, made a trip to Coloma that summer, stopping to celebrate the Fourth of July with John Sutter at Sutter's Fort. In his subsequent report, Colonel Mason estimated that about 4000 people were then working in the mines, about half of whom were Indians. Some $30,000 to $50,000 worth of gold was being gathered every day, he noted. Mason toured the area with James Marshall, talked to a number of miners, and actually saw quantities of gold -fourteen pounds of which had been taken from the North Fork the previous week by Indians working for John Sinclair, one of Stutter's neighbors. In July, shortly after news of the gold discovery reached Hawaii, the shipping crossroads of the Pacific, whole boatloads of gold-seekers began arriving from the Islands. In August, word got to Oregon, and settlers began drifting down to investigate. Soon people began arriving from the ranches and towns of Southern California, then from Sonora and other provinces of northern Mexico, and later in the fall from Chile and Peru. At the close of l848, when high water ended the first mining season, there were approximately 5,000 miners actually working, and gold was still relatively easy to find New strikes were being made every day. There was a feeling of plenty for all and a spirit of camaraderie, though living conditions were hard and prices high. A miner could leave his belongings and even his gold untended without a worry. The Great Rush Begins Words of the discovery reached the eastern United States in August and September, but was not taken seriously until Colonel Mason's official report reached Washington (accompanied by a tea caddy full of gold), and was mentioned in President Polk's message to Congress on December 5. Mason's report was carried in newspapers throughout the Country. After that almost every edition of every newspaper carried a gold rush story, often accompanied by an editorial warning against the "folly" of running off to California-words that only served to foment the rush. Young men, and some not so young, left homes and farms, wives and businesses to head for the mines. Englanders took anything that would sail-and some old hulks that should not have-and spent five months or more rounding Cape Horn to get to San Francisco. In Michigan, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania, companies of men took passage down the rivers to St. Joseph and Council Bluffs and other 'jumping-off points for the trail across the plains. Miners from Georgia and other parts of the Old South took the Santa Fe Trail and routes across Mexico. The Fast Tract To Problems The fastest way-if you had luck and money-was to go by steamer to Panama, then by dugout and mule to the Pacific side of the isthmus for another steamer to San Francisco. This could be done in a little over a month, but one took ones chances, first with fever and mud and the local bandits while crossing the isthmus, then with delays catching a ship on the Pacific side. he first arrivals from the East Coast came that way, reaching San Francisco at the end of February. Those who went around the Horn began arriving In June. Overland trekkers started drifting in about midsummer. By the end of 1849 there were 40,000 people in the mines, and the easy pickings were mostly gone. Lawlessness, sickness, and disillusionment were growing problems. Individual miners generally had a hard time breaking even, with eggs at a dollar apiece and butter at $6 a pound. In the mines, the pocketknife gave way to the gold pan, the pan to the rocker, and the rocker to the long tom and the sluice box. Mining was becoming a team operation; even the rocker was more efficient with two men to operate it. The long tom and the sluice box were still more effective, but required even more of a team operation. By the fall of '49 gold fever had spread worldwide. Companies were being formed in Great Britain, Germany, and France. Miners were being recruited in China. It was a time of political and economic upheaval throughout the world -revolution in France, Germany, and Italy; the potato famine in Ireland; the opium wars and Taiping Rebellion in China. The Gold Rush was a safety valve for desperate people. And the chance to escape was real. Throughout much of the world, steamships, railroads, and better road systems were making it possible for masses of people to leave intolerable situations and seek new opportunities. Even affluent stay-at-homes were touched by the California Gold Rush, as the increased money supply affected financial markets all over the globe. By the end of the 1850s, most of the big gold deposits that remained untouched were under the rivers or in prehistoric riverbeds far from existing water. Either situation required major engineering efforts including the construction of dams and flumes to get at the gold. Mining rapidly became a corporate enterprise involving large amounts of capital and hired labor. The lone miner and his pan was already becoming a mythical figure of the past. Gold production remained high for most of the rest of the century, but in later decades it was mostly from hard-rock mining that involved miles of tunnels deep under the earth, or hydraulic mining that washed away whole mountainsides for a few ounces of gold. Hydraulic mining was the only completely new mining technique to come out of the Gold Rush-the rest were only improvements on already known methods. Mud and gravel from "hydraulicking" filled up the riverbeds and made them unnavigable. The steamer "Daisy" made its last run up the American to the town of Folsom in 1882. Marysville died as a port on the Sacramento about the same time. Farmlands were flooded and buried under mud, rocks, and sand. In 1884, after a long political struggle, hydraulic mining was essentially outlawed-one of the first big environmental battles in a state now renowned for them. The rocks did not lie long at rest. After the turn of the century they were churned up once again along most of the rivers and streams by giant dredgers that left endless windrows of bare stones behind them as they recovered the last few bits of gold. All gold mining in the United States was halted by executive order early in World War II. Dredgers were converted to gravel digging, and the deep mines filled with water as the pumps that maintained them were turned off. By the time the presidential order was lifted, much of the old gold mining gear had rusted or been sold for scrap. Mine reopenings were usually considered uneconomical, and little mining resumed. Today, with higher gold prices, interest in mining has revived. Proposals for grand-scale open-pit mining have raised gold-seeking hopes-and environmental hackles. At the other end of the scale, recreational panners and suction-dredge operators in scuba gear are finding fun-and sometimes a fair amount of gold-reworking the creeks and rivers of '49. Reminders of the Gold Rush still exist in the form of colorful place names-Hangtown, Fiddletown, Rough and Ready-and acres of dredger tailings, old mine shafts, and rusty mining machinery in remote canyons. Mining knowledge gained by hard experience in California formed the basis for later mining operations throughout the West as well as in Mexico and around the world. It also spurred other gold rushes that helped settle Nevada and Colorado, and even Australia and Alaska. Sutter and Marshall never enjoyed the wealth, power, and prestige they felt they deserved, but what they set in motion was something far greater than either the "notional" carpenter and prospector or the frustrated little Swiss empire builder ever envisioned. Coloma It might be said that the town of Coloma was born when those first gold-seekers came up into the foothills from the valley settlements and coastal towns and added their tents and shanties to the rough cabins that Marshall and his men had built near the mill. By the fall of 1848 there were still only three stores-one of them Sam Brannan's-when E. Gould Buffum's party stopped for provisions on their way to a strike on the Middle Fork. As Buffum described it then, the Coloma Valley was a "beautiful hollow ... surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains." On the way back down from the mountains six months later, Buffum noted that "hundreds of tents whitened the plain." And soon the tents were giving way to more substantial buildings as Coloma became the hub of the northern mining region, the trading and recreation center for remote mining camps and lone cabin dwellers who were spreading like ants over the hills and ravines of the American River and all its tributaries. By the early 1850s Coloma had opulent hotels and restaurants with fine china, silverware, and white table cloths. Menus offered everything from oysters to ice cream. There were saloons and gambling halls. In the Coloma Theater, La Petite Susan did her "Spider Dance" and "Highland Fling," Mademoiselle Thierry starred in ballet, John Kelly played his violin and sang in a sweet tenor, and the Potter, Chapman and Robinson family troupes played everything from Shakespeare to "The Hunchback." There were a couple of breweries, a candy store, an,] two bookstores. Ellen Wilson, proprietress of "The Lone Star of Texas," gave generously to charity from the earnings of her girls, "especially during the cholera and smallpox epidemics of 1852-53." She died, greatly mourned, when a gunman firing through her parlor window "missed his man" and hit Ellen instead. One of the largest Chinatowns in California grew up around the old mill site, and a ferry service and later a covered bridge encouraged development on the north side of the river. The town became the county seat when the County of El Dorado was created in 1850. Coloma was never an ordinary mining town. Its placers could support only a modest number of gold- seekers, and there were in fact only 600 to 900 residents. But the town served a surrounding population of several thousand, and tens of thousands more passed through. It was where everybody came, the ultimate step to prove one had been part of the Gold Rush. For everyone knew that Coloma was the place where the great discovery had occurred. The News Spread Fast The News of 1854 May 13, 1854 "In our onward career to greatness, renown, and glory, we should not forget the spot, nor the associations, which consecrated this land to the American people, and brought the teeming masses of civilization to these shores, to overcome the natural fastnesses of the country, and to develop the resources buried deep within her bosom. Co-extensive with the name of California, and her un- bounded wealth, is the name of Sutter's Mill -the prominent classic ground of California. 'Twas here was unearthed, from amidst the sand, the "golden era" which has so effectually revolutionized the American world, and makes our mountain and valleys teeming with life, energy, and activity. The accidental discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill was the commencement of a new era in the affairs of the world - the opening of a wide and extended field of enterprise which has infused new life into every department of society. So sudden and electric have been the influences, so powerful and prompt their application, that weeks accomplish in this State the work of years in any other portion of the world. The magic changes which have taken place in this country would astonish any but a Californian to witness, The past, however, is but a brief index to the future. If we have sprung into existence as a State, full grown, without infancy or childhood, the first page of our history has scarcely commenced to be written. "In our swift progress to eminence-in the rushing tide that bears us on to the niche of fame which destiny has marked out for us to occupy-in the struggle for wealth, and our ambitious longings, we should remember our classic ground - Suttees old Mill. The race, so celebrated in story, and the digging of which proved so pregnant in the history of our times, is filled up. The clatter of the wheel is stilled, probably never again to reverberate upon the oar-the saw and other trappings are removed-the hand of the Goth is removing portions of its structure for holy relics-as momentos of a pilgrimage to its shrine. The sturdy frame still stands a way mark to the wanderer, a fit representative of the past, an object of solicitude for the future. Its history is classic. "Amid the changes which are continually going on in our midst-the levelling propensities of the age-the velocity of the progression of the American people, it would be well to preserve some vestige of the past - a relic to open the pages of our early history; and what more fitting emblem could be preserved than Sutter's Mill. It is, at the present time, an object of curiosity, and will continue to become more so. Frequent pilgrimages are made to this place on purpose to visit the old Mill; and but a few days since, a party of ladies and gentlemen were here from San Francisco for the same purpose. As time progresses, this spot will become more attractive, and consequently numerous visitors will congregate here, to examine the place where gold was first discovered, and to take a look at the old Mill. Who will dispute its claims to being classic grounds?" The Empire County Argus, May 13, 1854 As It Can Be Seen Today The best place to start your tour of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park is at the visitor center and museum. Interpretive exhibits and programs tell the story of the gold discovery and help make it come alive. Publications about the park (including a free trail guide) can be found in the visitor center. All revenue from the sale of publications goes to the Gold Discovery Park Association to help support the park's educational and interpretive programs. Members of the association donate many hours of work to the park. On the other side of the highway close beside the river, a working replica of Sutter's mill has been con- structed. About a hundred yards downstream a sturdy monument of river cobbles marks the spot where the original mill stood. The site is now high and dry because the river channel has been changed over the years by mining, gravel dredging, floods, and upstream dams. On the skyline to the southwest, the statue of James W. Marshall can be seen pointing down to the spot where he found those first flakes of gold that set the world on the move. None of the simple buildings of the discovery period are still standing, but replicas of two log cabins can be seen, including one on the site where the Mormons lived when they were working on the original mill. There are also several structures from Coloma's brief reign as "Queen City of the Mines."
