II.

Discovery at Sutter’s Mill

In January 1848 James W. Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill in partnership with John A. Sutter in California’s Sacramento Valley, discovered gold. Sutter made his workers promise to keep the discovery a secret. However, the news leaked out. Within a few months, a shrewd merchant, hoping to increase his business, set off the gold rush in earnest. Samuel Brannan, one of the early Mormon settlers in San Francisco, owned a store near Sutter’s fort. In early May, he returned to San Francisco from a visit to the diggings and spread the word of gold. Within a few days, boats filled with townspeople were heading up the Sacramento River to look for gold. Brannan, of course, had stocked his store with mining supplies and was doing a thriving business. San Francisco soon was a ghost town, as almost everyone was off to the gold sites.

During the summer of 1848, the news spread up and down the West Coast, across the border to Mexico, and even to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Word also reached the Mississippi Valley and the Eastern states. Newspapers were filled with the accounts of men who claimed to have become rich overnight by picking gold out of California’s wondrous earth. Then, in a message to the Congress of the United States in December, President James K. Polk confirmed the presence of gold in California. That winter, people from all walks of life set out for California. Many pawned their possessions to get there. The gold seekers, also known as Forty-Niners or Argonauts, joined the rush from as far off as Europe and Australia. Many Chinese also flocked to San Francisco to join in the gold rush.