The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush

Preface

It was here, in this sleepy valley, that the American Dream was re-defined. An accidental discovery near the obscure American River would forever change a young nation. The simple life would no longer be enough. In its place would come a new kind of lifestyle: entrepreneurial, wide-open, free. The new American dream: to get rich; to make a fortune—quickly.

Instant wealth was here for the taking. All across America, young men made the decision to go to California.

J.S. Holliday, author of "The World Rushed In":

"He (a would-be miner) talks to his wife and says: 'look if I go to California for one year or even less than that—I can come home with ten thousand dollars. I can pay off the mortgage, I can get out from under your father. I can stop this miserable job that I have. We can send the children to school. We

will have what we want. We will have all the promise of America. Not over a lifetime but over a few months."

Every city, every hamlet would send its brightest, its strongest, to California—and eagerly await their triumphant return home. They came from Europe, Asia, and South America in search of instant riches.

It was one of the greatest adventures the world had ever seen.

Discovery

In the early 1840s, California was a distant outpost that only a handful of Americans had seen. The sleepy port that would become San Francisco had just a few hundred residents.

One of the wealthiest people in the region was John Sutter—an affable Swiss immigrant who came to California in 1839, intent on building his own private empire. Sutter soon built a fort, amassed 12,000 head of cattle, and took on hundreds of workers. His most prolific crop was debt. He owed money to creditors as far away as Russia. But Sutter was a man with a dream; a dream of a vast agricultural domain that he would control.

By the mid 1840s, more and more Americans were trickling into California by wagon and ship. Sutter welcomed the newcomers—he saw them as subjects for his self-styled kingdom. But Sutter had no idea that the trickle would become a flood—a deluge of humanity that would destroy his dream. Sutter's undoing began 50 miles northeast of his fort on the American River. In late 1847, James Marshall and about 20 men were sent to the river by Sutter to build a sawmill—to provide lumber for Sutter's growing ranch.