January 24, 1848. Gold is Discovered at Sutter’s Mill
In 1848 John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant barely conversant in English, hired a carpenter to build a sawmill powered by the waters of the American River at Coloma, California. Sutter was not particularly a patriot having often threatened to have the area around his self-erected fort annexed by France. He called the region New Helvetia and when it was seized by US troops in 1846 during the Mexican-American War, he did not resist but strongly resented the American interference.
The carpenter he had hired, James Marshall, was tasked with completing the mill quickly as Sutter needed lumber to build a town on property he owned on the Sacramento River, today’s Sacramento California. Marshall was inspecting the mill’s recently completed tailrace to ensure adequate water flow on the morning of January 24 when he discovered gold nuggets and flakes in the silt.
Showing them to his employer, both men agreed to keep the discovery secret until the strength of the lode could be determined. Sutter also needed more time to acquire all of the affected lands along the Sacramento River. There proved to be too much gold for the secret to long last and when more was discovered by a newspaper publisher named Sam Brannan it rapidly became public knowledge.
By August California gold was being trumpeted in eastern newspapers and over the course of the following year, San Francisco grew from a town of 1,000 to more than 25,000. The desire to reach California quickly from the east added push to the drive to build a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. People came from all over the world to mine California gold and since the Americans were closest, more Americans got there first.
By September 1850, California was the 31st state in the Union. The towns built during the Gold Rush provided greater riches to merchants, railroads, manufacturers, (such as Levi Strauss) and other commercial ventures than the mines did for most, but it was the lure of gold found at Sutter’s Mill which led to California’s rapid statehood.