Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
GOING FOR THE GOLD
California's Gold Rush started in 1848 when James Marshall was inspecting the fatefully
sited lumber mill he was building for John Sutter near present-day Coloma. He saw a
sparkle in the mill's tailrace water and pulled out a nugget 'roughly half the size of a pea.'
Marshall hightailed it to Sacramento and consulted Sutter, who tested the gold by meth-
ods described in an encyclopedia. Sutter still wanted to finish his mill so he made a deal
with his laborers, allowing them to keep gold they found after hours if they kept working.
Before long, word of the find leaked out.
Sam Brannan was among those who went to Coloma to investigate the rumors shortly
after Marshall's find. After finding 6oz of gold in one afternoon, he paraded through San
Francisco's streets proclaiming, 'Gold on the American River!' Then he snapped up every
piece of mining equipment - from handkerchiefs to shovels - in the area. When gold
seekers needed equipment for their adventure, Brannan sold them goods at a 100%
markup and was a rich man before the gold seekers even reached the foothills.
The mill's construction was finished in the spring of 1848 when the first wave of miners
arrived from San Francisco. Only a few months later, the cities were depleted of able-bod-
ied men, while towns near the 'diggins,' as the mines were called, swelled to thousands.
News of the Gold Rush spread around the world, and by 1849 more than 60,000 people
(who became widely known as forty-niners) rushed into California. Everyone was looking
for the Mother Lode: the mythical deposit believed to be the source of all the gold wash-
ing into the streams and riverbeds.
Most prospectors didn't stick around after the initial diggings petered out; gold-extrac-
tion processes became increasingly equipment-dependent, culminating in the practice of
hydraulic mining, by which miners drained lakes and rivers to power their water cannons
and blast away entire hillsides. People downstream were inundated by the muck and fi-
nally sued in 1884. The Sawyer court held the environmental cost was too great to justify
staying in business.
EL DORADO & AMADOR COUNTIES
In the heart of the pine- and oak-covered Sierra foothills, this is where gold was first dis-
covered - Spanish-speaking settlers named El Dorado County after a mythical city of
riches.
