Volume 43- No. 44
By Frank Lorey III The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 started the great gold rush to California. The account that drew national and worldwide notice was a small two-inch item at the bottom of the front page of the March 15, 1848, issue of the “Californian,” published in San Francisco. The article was attributed to B.R. Buckelew, and mentioned quantities of gold just being “gathered.”
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Ever since, the search for gold has been popular and even today is a hobby or more for many people. Modern technology has developed specialized equipment costing thousand of dollars for the more serious searchers. At first the gold rush did not draw miners—they were simply “Argonauts”—gold seekers. Further stories that elaborated on James Marshall’s account told that he just picked up the original nugget, leading to the belief that all you had to do was get to
California and start picking up the gold, as it must just be lying everywhere (at least in the foothills of the Sierra’s). It was supposed to be “easy pickin’s.” The first notice gave more than just an impression that gold was found all over the state, saying “Gold has been found in almost every part of the country.” While it is true that gold had been found in several locations in the state as early as the 1820’s, by the date of the March article very few loca-
“Gold!”
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tions had actually been found in the Mother Lode country. Those that had were only a few miles at most from the vicinity of Coloma, the new town that sprang up at the site of Sutter’s Mill. The first gold seekers were illequipped, arriving with very few supplies, and little in the way of tools and equipment that would be needed to really recover the placer gold. This led to a second “gold rush”—shopkeepers who found they could easily make more each day providing sup-