This documentary narrates the California Gold Rush, triggered by James Marshall's discovery of gold in 1848. The news spread rapidly, causing a mass migration of people from various backgrounds and professions to California. The gold rush significantly impacted the lives of individuals like John Sutter, whose sawmill and agricultural empire were disrupted by the influx of miners, and James Marshall himself, who faced numerous setbacks and ultimately died penniless. The documentary also highlights the experiences of gold seekers, including those who traveled by sea and overland, facing hardships and uncertainties in their pursuit of wealth. It also touches on the social and environmental consequences of the gold rush, such as conflicts between miners and Native Americans, the rise of boomtowns, and the transformation of the California landscape due to extensive mining operations. Despite the challenges and complexities, the California Gold Rush remains a significant chapter in American history, shaping the development of the state and leaving a lasting legacy.

Full Transcript of the Video:

[Music] Right! [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh California, thou land of glitter and dreams, Where the yellow dust and diamonds bore, are found in all thy screams.

And all of us have been not, and left our best of life for this.

Cheer we up, we will return, laden with golden bliss.

Saddle our mules, away we go, with hopes by fancy lead, To where the Sacramento flows over its glittering bed.

Oh California, thou land of glitter and dreams, Where the yellow dust and diamonds bore, are found in all thy streams.

Oh California, thou land of glitter and dreams, Where the yellow dust and diamonds bore, are found in all thy streams.

[Music] At the beginning of 1848, the same year Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was published, James Marshall was a simple carpenter with modest plans for the future.

Having settled near Coloma, California only three years earlier, he'd hoped to acquire land and to eventually build a sawmill on the American River.

He'd been steadily working toward those goals, doing what he knew best.

Honest, hard, rather ordinary work.

Up until the morning of January 24th, 1848.

The morning that would change everything.

I shall never forget that morning.

As I was taking my usual walk, my eye caught with a glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch.

I reached my hand down and picked it up.

It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.

I thought it was golden, yet it did not seem to be of the right color.

Putting one of the pieces on a hard river stone, I took another and commenced hammering it.

It was soft and didn't break, therefore must be gold.

[Music] Marshall rushed to tell his employer John Sutter what he'd found.

[Music] With the help of Sutter's copy of the Encyclopedia Americana, the two men set about to determine the exact content of gold in the sample.

In no time at all, they found that it was indeed pure.

It would seem to have been an occasion for celebration.

Instead, the two men swore to keep their discovery a secret for the time being.

Sutter, a German-born Swiss, was already a man of many secrets, and he couldn't afford to let this one get out prematurely.

He'd left angry creditors behind in Germany when he arrived in America in 1834, but not his freewheeling lifestyle and ambitions.

By trading on his own personal charm and wild tales of connections with European royalty, he was well on his way to realizing his dream of creating a 50,000-acre agricultural empire.

Aside from the manpower provided by the local Indians he employed, the cornerstone of Sutter's empire was the sawmill Marshall had built on the American River.

The mill provided the lumber for fences, cabins, and other buildings on Sutter's ranch.

But Sutter's position was precarious to the extreme.

He'd barred heavily to finance his empire.

His employees were so numerous, he had to slaughter four or five steers a day to feed them all, but he needed every last one to keep his operations running.

Even worse, Sutter and Marshall's title to the land where the gold had been found was tenuous at best.

They'd arranged a generous lease agreement with the Coloma Indians, but were concerned that the territorial government would refuse to recognize it.

Two weeks after Marshall's discovery, those fears were confirmed, when the military governor of California bluntly stated, "The United States do not recognize the right of Indians to sell or lease the lands on which they reside to private individuals.

" Slowly but surely, the veil of secrecy around Marshall's discovery began to unravel.

A cook at Sutter's mill told her sons.

Even Sutter himself had a slip of the tongue.

By February, three Mormons, on advice from one of their brothers at the mill, set up the first mining camp on an exposed sandbar near the mill.

Gradually, miners began drifting down from the mountains into San Francisco, with bags of gold dust and stories of instant, easy wealth.

Within six weeks, virtually all Sutter's employees had deserted him.

Those crops that weren't ruined by lack of employees to tend them were trampled by the stampeding feet of gold seekers who poured into the region.

They didn't recognize Sutter and Marshall's claim to the land, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Sutter wasn't even an American citizen.

His paper said he was a citizen of Mexico, the country that had just signed a treaty seeding the territory of California to the United States.

Sutter wasn't the only employer whose men deserted him to search for gold.

All over California and the rest of the continent, workers exchanged the tools of their trade for pans and pickaxes as they ran pell-mell for the gold fields.

By boat around Cape Horn, across the Pacific from Hawaii and overland by wagon train, men and women by the thousands set aside their lives as farmers, ranchers, teachers, and homesteaders.

They begged, barred, and stole to rush toward California.

When they came for the year the gold rush began, the 49ers came from across America and around the world.

It was one of the greatest mass migrations the world had ever seen.

They came for the dream that California gold would change their lives, and it would, but not necessarily by making them rich.

On July of 1849, 22-year-old Enos Crisman of Westchester, Pennsylvania set sail on a ship named Europe, bound for California.

Apprenters' apprentice, he left his fiancée, Ellen Appel, and embarked on the 13,000-mile voyage around Cape Horn.

For nine long months, Enos would be at sea, before finally reaching California soil.

"My dear Enos, I know that you have been wanting to go to that tempting place, California, and that you would never be satisfied if you did not go.

So I hope it is all for the best.

Well, I know you left all that was near and dear to you to go to the gold mines, and well, I know that all that is near and dear to me is you.

You have no idea how I miss you.

I have not gone to bed a night since you left Europe until I prayed to God to bless you and be with you on your long journey, and grant that you may be there safely, that you may have good luck when you get there, that you may return safe.

" Enos endured nine months of seasickness, drunken brawls, and maggot-infested food, keeping his sights on California and Ellen and his heart.

As time crept slowly forward for Enos aboard ship, other pioneers made their way overland toward the gold fields.

The news of the California strike reached Louisiana and Mason Wilson on the Missouri prairie in the spring of 1849.

It was as though a fire had been lit under him.

"We early caught the fever.

My husband grew enthusiastic and wanted to start immediately, but I would not be left behind.

I thought where he could go I could, and where I went I would take my two little tardling babies.

It sounded like such a small task to go out to California, and once there, fortune, of course, would come to us.

It was the work of but a few days to collect our forces for the march into the new country.

Saturday we looked over our belongings and threw aside what was not absolutely necessary, beds we must have, and something to eat.

On Monday morning bright and early we were off.

The sun was scarcely above the horizon when we were on the road to California.

" The first day out, the Wilsons crossed the Missouri River and entered what was known as the Indian Territory.

The various tribes whose lands the party trekked across rarely attacked settlers.

However, like many white pioneers, Louisiana was afraid of all Indians.

Her fears would not easily be put to rest.

"Here commence my terrors, around us in every direction were groups of Indians.

I had read and heard whole volumes of their bloody deeds, the massacre of harmless white men, torture and helpless women and carrying off captive, innocent babies.

I felt my children to be the most precious in the wide world, and I lived in agony of dread that first night.

The Indians were friendly, of course, and swapped ponies for whiskey and tobacco with the gathered bands of immigrants.

But I, in the most tragic comic manor, sheltered my babies with my own body and felt imaginary arrows pierce my flesh a hundred times at night.

" The Wilsons' overland journey took six months.

As they came within a day's journey of Sacramento, a staging area for the northern mines, they set up camp for the night.

"I had cooked my supper on the campfire as usual, when a hungry miner, attracted by the unusual side of a woman, said to me, 'I'll give you five dollars, ma'am, for them biscuits.

' It sounded like a fortune to me, and I looked at him to see if he meant it.

He repeated his offer to purchase, and said he would give me ten dollars for bread made by a woman, and laid the shining gold piece in my hand.

I made some more biscuit for my family, told my husband of my good fortune, and put the precious corn away as a nest egg for the wealth we were to gain.

In my dreams that night, I saw crowds of bearded miners striking gold from the earth with every blow of the pick, each one seeming to leave a share from me.

" It began to dawn on Lucina that the way to become wealthy was not off the mines, but off the miners.

Aside from her cooking skills and her newly awakened entrepreneurial spirit, Lucina's gender would also be a valuable asset.

The sight of a woman in a mining town was a rare one, and as Lucina had discovered in the mining camp, the simple joy of eating a meal prepared by a woman's hands was one that hungry prospectors sorely missed in the gold fields.

For many of them, merely being in Lucina's presence was a rare treat.

Often months had passed before Lucina herself would see another woman.

"Right!" Within three days of their arrival in Sacramento, the Wilsons sold their oxen for $600 and used the money to buy an interest in a hotel.

A small town bustled with activity as miners and wheel trains passed through town on their way to the gold fields.

A bank, a few wooden buildings, and canvas shacks flanked the main street.

Securing her two-room hotel, Lucina was learning that miners paid dearly for the comforts of home.

In 1849, hearing the news of gold in California, Dr. Bassett joined the rush taking me with him.

I said goodbye to my family, not knowing when I would see them again.

Alvin Coffey was an enslaved black who had inherited his last name as well as his light-colored complexion from his grandfather, a white slaveholder.

Coffey's ownership had changed three times by the start of the gold rush.

I was near death when Henry Duvall sold me in 1846 to Dr. William Bassett.

Duvall considered himself quite lucky to be able to sell me cheap as a dead nigger for $600.

I survived him 36 years, in spite of his selling me as a dead nigger.

Now his new master, Dr. William Bassett, caught gold fever.

Coffey had no choice but to follow him to California, leaving behind his wife and children in Missouri.

Bassett was made captain of the train, which consisted of 20 ox-drawn wagons.

There were 80 pioneers in the train.

Quite a crowd of neighbors drove through the mud and rain to wish us a safe journey in St.

Joe.

Cholera was sweeping a deadly path through the area, and as the wagon train crossed the Missouri River, they met the epidemic head-on.

Nathaniel Clark, one of the men in our train, came down with Cholera.

Bassett did all that he could for him, but within hours he was dead.

We buried him and set out immediately.

There were rumors of people dying of Cholera by the hundreds in St.

Joe and St.

Louis.

Trying to escape, we pushed ahead hard, averaging two miles an hour.

We kept up the pace until only the cholera was behind us.

The grueling trek saw the loss of more men, horses and oxen.

Dr. Bassett's health steadily deteriorated after he contracted the flux, an intestinal disorder.

But finally, in October of 1849, after six months and 2,000 miles, Alvin and his owner reached Reading Springs, California.

Two days later, they set up camp at a place called Clear Creek and began mining.

[Music] At the news of the discovery of the gold mines and the confirmation of the riches uncovered, several parties left from the Los Angeles area.

I went in one of them, composed of about 30 men.

We went north to the Pueblo of San Jose.

There, we heard news of the discovery of several gold-bearing regions.

The one that attracted most attention was the dry diggens, for which we started out in August of 1848.

A Mexico City native, Antonio Franco Coronel, was teaching school in the Pueblo Los Angeles when news of the gold strike came.

He quickly assembled his team.

Upon arrival at the San Joaquin River in the Tulare Valley, we met a padre.

He was a true vaquero and had a great deal of gold with him.

The padre told the men of a recently discovered site, rich in gold flakes.

He did his advice, Coronel and his men set off for Stanislaus camp.

They found the camp to be settled with Mexican natives from Los Angeles, Spanish immigrants, and other foreigners.

They selected a site in the center of the main ravine for their own campsite.

A little before sunset there arrived at our camp, seven Indians, each one with little sacks of gold shaped like a long sausage from 10 to 12 inches long on the average.

I was leaning on my saddle and on top of the saddlebags were several ordinary blankets.

Their value had been two pesos each.

One of the Indians took one of them and pointed to the sack filled with gold.

He pointed out a certain spot as the amount he was offering for the blanket.

I took a tin plate that we had and the Indian emptied the gold into it and after giving him the blanket I weighed it.

There were seven and one quarter ounces, the first gold from the gold mines of California that I obtained.

At $16 an ounce, Coronel had enriched himself by almost $120 without even sawing his hands.

After the Indians left, Coronel dispatched one of his servants and a companion to follow the Indians to find the source of their gold.

The two men followed the Indians to Canyon Del Barro Ravine, then began digging for gold right next to them.

They didn't dig for long before her in back to Coronel's camp.

They had scraped three ounces of gold from the walls of their ravine with little effort at all.

By dawn the following day, Coronel and his party had staked their claim to the land the Indians had been digging on.

Though they had found it first, the Indians' claim was cast aside.

Instead, the Indians were hired by Coronel to help his team dig for gold.

Everyone began to work at daybreak.

Soon after a little digging we came to the gold deposits.

I recovered by working all day about 45 ounces of coarse gold.

Within weeks, Coronel amassed enough gold to purchase a ranch and vineyard back in Los Angeles.

His appetite whetted.

Coronel left the gold country vowing to return the next season, after the snow and rain of winter.

In 1849, the year Dickens published "David Copperfield," another writer arrived in tiny San Francisco, a town that was changing so rapidly one could hardly recognize it from one day to the next.

People who had been absent six weeks came back and could scarcely recognize the place.

It was calculated that the town increased daily by from 15 to 30 houses.

Its skirts were rapidly approaching the summit of the three hills on which it is located.

Bayard Taylor, a journalist, had sailed to California on a Panama steamer to cover the gold rush for the readers of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune.

Taylor docked in San Francisco in August of 1849.

In April, San Francisco had boasted only 30 or 40 houses.

It now held a population of 6,000 people.

Many of those residents had arrived on ships, and for many of those ships, the sea voyage had been a one-way trip.

The harbor was clogged with their rotting hulks, now abandoned, as their passengers, sailors, and sea captains all headed for the gold fields.

But such overnight growth wasn't restricted to larger cities.

Wherever gold was discovered, mining towns sprang up in the wink of an eye.

Towns sprouted with names like Grizzly Flats, Gaugeye, Murderer's Bar, and Coyote.

These towns served a community of like-minded prospectors, whose only goal was instant wealth.

When the gold ran out and the miners left, the towns died as quickly as they had been born.

Miners would stake a claim to a plot of land, sometimes by driving stakes into the ground, painting their names on a rock, or carving it on a tree trunk.

Early on, when the gold was still reached easily, the most common tools were the shovel and the tin pan.

Soil was placed in the pan and washed in water to remove the lighter sediments.

For a higher yield with less labor, the serious prospector used a cradle, a long tom, or a sluice.

The cradle was named after the piece of furniture resembled.

Miners poured water into the cradle, rocked it back and forth, and washed the soil down through a series of baffles.

Miners also took up the long tom, a 12-foot trough.

Dirt was shoveled in, then water was allowed to pass through.

Gold-bearing sediments were collected in the riffle box at the end.

A sluice could process up to 100 cubic yards of soil a day, as long as dirt was shoveled in and water flowed through.

Gold mining in California was evolving.

In the beginning, a miner working by himself or with a few comrades could reap huge benefits in a few short days or weeks.

But as more soil needed to be processed, more drastic means were needed to extract the precious metal.

Within a few years of the first discovery, full-scale hydraulic mining operations were tearing into the California landscape.

Whole hillsides vanished, replaced by monstrous slag heaps.

Rivers were rerouted and water tables altered, all in pursuit of the mineral that would change California, the nation, and the lives of our pioneers forever.

[Music] His nine-month sea voyage behind him, Enos Crisman, was now hard at work in the gold fields.

Tuesday, May 14.

All day Saturday we worked hard in mud and water, and in the evening divided our pile of dust.

I had S reward for five days hard labor, two dollars, ninety cents.

Dear Enos, you have made every effort to obtain gold.

You have failed in that effort.

Be not disheartened.

Riches taketh wings and flies away, but happiness no one can take from us.

I repeat what I have said in all my letters, that it is not every man's luck to make a fortune.

If your health is improved and you have a safe return to your dearest friends, to have made the effort will perhaps be a lasting benefit and repay you for all your troubles.

Gold will not buy health nor happiness.

Enos Crisman finally realized that the most dependable way to financial stability was in familiar employment, so he became a printer.

He worked for the Sonora Herald, saving his money for his return to Ellen.

Meanwhile, Alvin Coffey continued to work the gold fields for his master and for himself.

Since California was a free territory, Coffey had a better than average chance of escaping from his servitude there, but Coffey had to consider his family back in Missouri.

Dr. Bass had wanted me to mine gold for him, make him rich as usual.

I had to decide.

I had heard of slaves running away once they reached California, but I couldn't do that.

Not with my family being held hostage back in Missouri, my plan became clear to me.

I would mine for him and for myself, with the hope that one day I could buy my freedom and the freedom of my wife and children.

On October 15, 1849, we went to dry dig in mind.

There were eight to ten of us in camp.

It rained in snow pretty much all the winter, and we were barely able to stay dry in our tent.

We also had very little to eat.

We cut down pine trees for shakes to make a cabin, but still spent a whole week in the cold and damp before the cabin could be completed.

I worked the claims and put in a good long day's work from morning till dark.

After dark and on Sundays, when I wasn't needed, I was allowed time off to earn money for myself.

I worked for my freedom every day, seven days a week.

It would be just a matter of time before the day would come when I could walk free and stand tall.

Finally, in 1851, coffee and Dr. Bassett headed east again, stopping off in New Orleans.

The doctors suggested they get their gold coin, so coffee gave Bassett his $616 worth of gold, money he'd saved to purchase freedom for himself and his family.

Bassett got the gold coin, but never returned coffee's share.

Coffee realized there was nothing he could do about it.

He feared that if he protested, Bassett would sell him in New Orleans, and he'd never get back to his family.

Once back in Missouri, though, Bassett sold coffee anyway.

He didn't want Alvin exciting the rest of his slaves with tales of riches and freedom in California.

Ironically, coffee's new owners were the Tyndall family, who already owned his wife and children.

Although the family was once again reunited, coffee's pursuit of freedom was back where it started.

Coffee eventually struck an agreement with his new owners so that he could return to California to work to purchase freedom for himself, his wife, and his children.

The cost? $1,000.

Coffee wasted no time heading west again.

Hardships seemingly behind them now, Louisiana and Mason Wilson sold their interest in their hotel and bought a canvas house.

Sacramento bustled with activity.

Thousands of miners swelled the city.

But the Wilson saw no need to rush to the gold fields, not with the rain and snow winter coming.

They had invested everything in a huge stock of barley.

They might have done better had they headed for higher ground.

The first night we spent in our new home it rained.

And we slept with a cotton umbrella spread over our heads.

For days it rained incessantly.

Men and animals struggled through a sea of mud.

We wrung out our blankets every morning and warmed them by the fire.

They never had time to dry.

The canvas roof seemed like a sieve and the water dropped on us through the night.

Soon the clouds broke and the sun shone down.

But the full wrath of the storm was yet to be felt.

The sandbag barrier on the nearby American River gave way.

After 17 days the water finally subsided.

But the town and the Wilson small fortune in barley was destroyed.

Wiped out, Luzina and Mason moved to Nevada City to try their luck again.

After their arrival Mason set about to build a house for him to live in.

While Luzina's thoughts turned to restoring the family finances.

As always occurs to the mind of a woman I thought of taking borders.

I determined to set up a hotel.

With my own hands I chopped steaks, drove them into the ground and set up my table.

I bought provisions at a neighborhood store and when my husband came back at night he found 20 miners eating at my table.

Each man as he rose put a dollar in my hand and said I might count him as a permanent customer.

Luzina named the hotel El Dorado after the legendary country of gold.

Unlike the 16th century Spanish explorers however Luzina appeared to have found her fortune.

Within six months the Wilsons had saved $10,000 and built a store with an inventory of an equal amount.

But once again fate stepped in.

We had lived 18 months in Nevada City when fire cut us adrift again.

We were roused from sleep by the cry of fire, fire and the clang of bells.

We hurried out through the blinding smoke and darting flames and watched the fiery monster crush in his great red jaws the homes we had toiled to build.

8,000 people were left homeless by the fire.

Most people lost everything.

Fortunately for the Wilsons Mason neglected to put the $500 he had in his pockets into the family money box before retiring to bed.

This money allowed them to try their luck again in Sacramento where they took possession of a deserted hotel.

They'd only been gone 18 months but much was changed.

The town was bustling again.

California was a patchwork of ethnic and religious backgrounds but gold made for a volatile combination.

In the fierce competition for profitable mining sites confrontations frequently boiled over into violence.

Violence that was often along racial and ethnic lines.

In 1849 James Marshall found himself in the middle of such a conflict back along the American River not far from Sutter's Mill.

A group of prospectors known as the Oregon Boys had led a series of brutal attacks against the Nissin'on Indian tribe leading 75 dead.

The massacre was ostensibly in retaliation for the murder of several of the Oregon Gang.

Marshall sided with the Indians.

The Oregon Boys and their supporters angrily hounded Marshall from his land.

When Marshall returned to Coloma he found his property redistributed and overrun by squatters.

Marshall never got his land back.

The Indians weren't the only ethnic group who encountered racism.

Many Mexicans from Sonora were forcefully driven from their claims.

As a group they were already familiar with gold mining techniques and therefore apt to show better results.

25,000 Chinese settled in California to escape the political unrest and high unemployment of their homeland.

But for many of them California was not a land of golden opportunity.

It was a land of repression and murder.

There was quite a population of Chileans, Peruvians, Californians, Mexicans, Americans and Germans.

The campsites were almost separated by nationality.

Claims were being overrun by miners.

Gold was harder to come by and racial tension hung in the air like oil smoke.

Still, knowing that non-whites were less than welcome, Coronel, his servants and four companions settled at dried diggings.

Oh, some more, some less were profiting from the fruits of their labor.

But then the news went around of the expulsion from the mines of all those who were not American citizens because it was felt that foreigners did not have the right to exploit the mines.

One Sunday in 1849 the situation changed drastically.

White miners angrily posted a notice ordering all foreign miners to vacate within 24 hours or suffer the consequences.

There were a considerable number of people of various nationalities to whom disorder to leave applied.

They decided to gather on a hill in order to be on the defense in case of attack.

The day on which the departure of the foreigners was supposed to take place and during the next three or four days both forces remained cautious.

But the event did not go beyond shouts, gunshots and drunkenness.

And finally everything calmed down and we returned to continue our work.

Although daily some of the week were despoiled of their claims by the stronger.

A few days after this agitation calmed down a Frenchman and a Spaniard were seized.

They had been accused by an Irishman, an old man, of having robbed him of four pounds of gold.

We collected among everyone five pounds of gold to see it by paying.

The prisoners would be freed.

I went to the one who acted as chief.

The Indians of an interpreter I told him they had sufficient money of their own and had no reason to steal from anyone.

And nevertheless here were five pounds of gold.

One more than the old Irishman had said was stolen.

He took the five pounds of gold said he was going to talk with the committee and told me to return in the afternoon.

Before the appointed hour we saw armed men moving about.

The majority were under the influence of liquor.

Then we saw a cart come out with our two unfortunates.

Two men were guarding them and after it came a multitude of people.

On the cart was a sign which said that whoever defended them would meet the same fate.

They came to a note where the execution was to take place and when the ropes were being placed around their necks the prisoners had permission to write to their families and settle their affairs.

One thing made this plea.

One was slapped in the face.

Then suddenly they started the cart moving and the two poor men were hung.

Two days later I picked up camp and went to the northern lines.

In the years to come racial tensions would continue to flare into violence.

As white Americans sought to gain control of the declining riches of the gold fields more lynchings would occur.

Legal and quasi-legal actions would also be taken such as a series of laws taxing foreign miners.

Later in 1849 while mining along the upper American River Cornell was accosted and his claim was overrun by claim jumpers.

Immediately I could reflect that gold was not worth risking my life in this manner.

My companions had already sent for the horses to be settled.

I arrived at our camp and persuaded them to be calm and told them that for me the gold mines were over.

Cornell headed back to Los Angeles a very wealthy man nonetheless.

He eventually became mayor and throughout his life he remained influential in the Mexican American community.

During the boom times San Francisco was as good as it got.

This bustling port city had class and culture and a wild cornucopia of colorful characters.

People like Lola Montez, a raven-haired beauty who scandalized decent society with her notorious spider dance.

Lola's protege, Lotta Crabtree, child star extraordinaire, played to miners in the gold fields in San Francisco theater society alike.

The first American entertainer to become a millionaire.

Levi Strauss, the immigrant clothier whose idea of using surplus denim to make rugged trousers for the miners proved to be as profitable as was practical.

Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, spent time in San Francisco honing his skills as a young reporter under the tutelage of the celebrated writer Bret Hart.

And the strangest of all, Joshua Norton.

When his business dealings failed he proclaimed himself emperor of California.

The emperor was, of course, treated to free rail passage and tickets to the theater.

Always an opinionated man, he published Proclamations in the City Press invariably signed Norton I, emperor of California, and protector of Mexico de Gratia.

Through the years, Lucina and Mason Wilson saw their fortunes rise and fall several more times before finally settling in the farming village of Vacaville.

As white settlers immigrated to the fertile valley, the Spanish population gradually thinned, the adobe dwellings giving way to wooden frame houses.

Finally, Vacaville provided Lucina and Mason a comfortable life which they drew from the soil, not in nuggets of gold, but in produce and vineyards and orchards.

Eventually a school was established, the stagecoaches turned into trains, and the valley town grew and prospered, evolving from the roots of its simple rural beginnings.

In 1854, Alvin Coffey was far from being able to rest.

He was headed back to California for his second try at the Goldfields and freedom.

Along the way I hired myself out to people making and saving every penny until I found myself back in Shasta County.

I was continuously at various jobs to raise money to free myself and my family.

In August of 1857, I had $3,800 more.

I got back to Missouri by way of Panama.

Mahala and my five children were there waiting, and you better believe they were glad to see me and I to find them all well and sound.

Since according to the law, there were only two days in the year when slaves could be freed.

We had to wait a month or so to be emancipated, but we stood up under God's clear sky, free at last.

Thank him.

Alvin Coffey, a true survivor, went on to found a school for Indian and minority children in Shasta County, where he lived out his days surrounded by his family.

In July of 1852, three years after arriving in California, Enos Christman had finally saved up enough to head back east to his beloved Ellen.

My dear Enos, when you start home, take the quickest route, for I shall be so worried from the time you start until you arrive home.

I hardly know what more to write, except to tell you how happy I feel at the prospect of soon being with you, where I can press you to my bosom and tell you verbally what it would require pages of letters to contain.

On May 8, 1853, Enos Christman and his new bride Ellen stood on the Pine Street Wharf in Philadelphia, gazing out at the schooner Europe, birthed and waiting for another trip to California.

When we came in sight of her, I almost felt as though I were being greeted by an old and tired friend.

Memory carried me back to that day that I turned my face towards a land of golden promise, and I thought again of the high hopes with which I then set sail.

But the thought of the dear birth and on my arm broke in upon these musings and reminded me that all was well with me.

Indeed, my hopes have been gratified, and I have realized a fortune.

And James Marshall, perhaps the rush for gold had been cruelest to him.

His discovery undoubtedly set California on the path toward great wealth and high stature among states.

Gold built San Francisco and Sacramento.

It placed steamers on the rivers and created great commerce.

Gold brought California's population to it.

But to the modest carpenter who found those first nuggets in the bottom of a streambed in 1848, gold brought only heartache.

Hounded by autographed seekers, reporters and eccentrics who believed he possessed some mystical power to find gold, James Marshall returned to Coloma in 1857, luckless, penniless and embittered.

I owe the country nothing.

The enterprising energy of which the orators and editors of California's early golden days boasted so much as belonging to Yankeedom was not national, but individual.

Of the profits derived from the enterprise, it stands thus.

Yankeedom, six hundred million dollars, myself individually zero.

Marshall continued doing what he knew best, carpentry and blacksmithing, even becoming a vintner for a time.

But he just barely survived.

Never comfortable in the city, he finally moved to the small town of Kelsey, California, where his long slide into oblivion was accelerated by his fondness for strong drink.

On August 10th, 1885, a good friend found Marshall lying on his back in bed, fully dressed, his hat tip forward over his eyes.

Today, a statue of James Marshall towers over Coloma, his frozen finger pointing down at the site in the American River, where he set California on the road to discovery.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

The statue of James Marshall, the famous of the American River, was the first of many to be found in the city.

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