THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH BEGAN JANUARY 24, 1848

It was on this day in 1848 that the California Gold Rush began. The carpenter and wheelwright James Marshall was leading a crew to build a sawmill for a man named John Sutter, who owned nearly 50,000 acres along the Sacramento River and wanted to log it. Marshall had come west from New Jersey, following the Oregon Trail.

It was a cold, clear morning. The night before, Marshall had diverted water, trying to even out the river that would run through the sawmill and power it. On this morning, he found gold flecks where the water had been. He showed it to his crew members, they performed several tests on it, and everyone agreed it must be gold. He took it John Sutter, who asked Marshall and the workers to keep their discovery a secret so that he could continue with his plans for lumber — he didn’t want gold to get in the way. His plan failed, of course, and the truth was finally confirmed in the March 15th issue of The Californian out of San Francisco.

It took five months for news to reach the East Coast, but on August 19th, the New York Herald reported that there was gold in California, which President James Polk confirmed by December. It didn’t take long for gold prospectors to flock to California. Before the discovery of gold, the population of California was about 150,000 Indians and about 14,000 non-Indians. Twelve years later, more than 300,000 people had migrated to California, and fewer than 30,000 Indians remained.

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