History of California

Chapter VII

At the Touch of King Mi­das

It was by chance that gold was dis­cov­ered in both north­ern and south­ern Cal­ifor­nia, and by chance that many great for­tunes were made.

Juan Lopez, fore­man of the lit­tle ranch of St. Fran­cis in Los An­ge­les Coun­ty, one morn­ing in March, 1842, while idly dig­ging up a wild onion, or brode­cia, dis­cov­ered what he thought lumps of gold cling­ing to its roots. Tak­ing sam­ples of the met­al, he rode down to Los An­ge­les to the of­fice of Don Abel Stearns, who rec­og­nized it as gold.

Soon Juan and his com­pan­ions were busy dig­ging and wash­ing the earth and sands in the re­gion where the lit­tle wild flow­ers grew. These mines were called “plac­er,” from a Span­ish word mean­ing loose or mov­ing about, be­cause the met­al was loose­ly mixed with sand and grav­el, gen­er­al­ly in the bed of a stream or in a ravine where there had once been a flow of wa­ter which had brought the gold down from its home in the moun­tains.

From these mines Don Abel Stearns sent, in a sail­ing ves­sel round Cape Horn, the first par­cel of Cal­ifor­nia gold dust ev­er re­ceived at the Unit­ed States mint, and it proved to be of very good qual­ity.

The San Fer­nan­do mines, as they were called, be­cause they were on a ranch that had once be­longed to San Fer­nan­do mis­sion, yield­ed many thou­sand dol­lars’ worth of gold dust. It is on record that one firm in Los An­ge­les, which han­dled most of the gold from these and oth­er mines of south­ern Cal­ifor­nia, paid out in the course of twen­ty years over two mil­lion dol­lars for south­ern gold.

The true gold­en touch, how­ev­er, was to come in a dif­fer­ent part of the ter­ri­to­ry among peo­ple of an­oth­er race and tongue. It was to trans­form Cal­ifor­nia from an al­most un­known land with slight and scat­tered pop­ula­tion to a com­mu­ni­ty so rich as to dis­turb the mon­ey mar­kets of the world; a com­mu­ni­ty shel­ter­ing a great host of peo­ple, all young, all striv­ing ea­ger­ly for the for­tunes they had trav­eled thou­sands of miles to find.

Af­ter the sign­ing of the treaty of Cahuen­ga be­tween Colonel Fre­mont and Gen­er­al Pi­co, the Span­ish-​speak­ing peo­ple set­tled down qui­et­ly and peace­ful­ly. The on­ly dis­agree­ments were be­tween the Amer­ican lead­ers, Gen­er­al Kearny and Com­modore Stock­ton, and be­tween Kearny and Fre­mont, who had been ap­point­ed by Stock­ton mil­itary gov­er­nor of the ter­ri­to­ry. This ap­point­ment Gen­er­al Kearny dis­put­ed. Gen­er­al Valle­jo tells in one of his let­ters of hav­ing re­ceived on the same day com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Kearny, Stock­ton, and Fre­mont, each sign­ing him­self com­man­der-​in-​chief.

Who­ev­er was right in the quar­rel, Fre­mont was the chief suf­fer­er, for Gen­er­al Kearny, af­ter Stock­ton left, or­dered him to re­turn East un­der ar­rest and at Wash­ing­ton to un­der­go a mil­itary tri­al or court-​mar­tial for mutiny and dis­obe­di­ence of or­ders. Al­though the court found him guilty and sen­tenced him to be dis­missed from the army, the Pres­ident, re­mem­ber­ing his ser­vices in the ex­plo­ration of the West, and quite pos­si­bly think­ing him not the per­son most to blame, par­doned and re­stored him to his po­si­tion. Fre­mont, feel­ing that he had done noth­ing wrong, re­fused the par­don and re­signed from the army. The next year the new Pres­ident, Tay­lor, showed his opin­ion of the mat­ter by ap­point­ing Fre­mont to con­duct the im­por­tant work of es­tab­lish­ing the bound­aries be­tween the Unit­ed States and Mex­ico.

Gen­er­al Kearny, when he de­part­ed for the East, left Colonel Ma­son, of the reg­ular army, as mil­itary gov­er­nor of Cal­ifor­nia. Ma­son chose as his ad­ju­tant, or sec­re­tary, a young lieu­tenant named Sher­man, who, years lat­er, in the Civ­il War, by his won­der­ful march through the heart of the South, came to be con­sid­ered one of the great­est gen­er­als of his time.

Soon af­ter the Mex­ican war many set­tlers were gath­ered about Sut­ter’s Fort and San Fran­cis­co Bay. There were about two thou­sand Amer­icans, most of them strong, hardy men, all over­joyed that the ter­ri­to­ry was in the hands of the Unit­ed States and all ea­ger to know what would fi­nal­ly be de­cid­ed in re­gard to it. Re­ports kept ar­riv­ing of par­ties of em­igrants that were about to start over­land for Cal­ifor­nia.

“They are as cer­tain to come as that the sun will rise to-​mor­row,” said ge­nial Cap­tain Sut­ter, “and as the over­land trail ends at my ran­cho, I must be ready to fur­nish them pro­vi­sions. They are al­ways hun­gry when they get there, es­pe­cial­ly the tired lit­tle chil­dren, and the on­ly thing for me to do is to build a flour mill to grind my grain.”

“Well and good,” said James Mar­shall, one of his as­sis­tants, an Amer­ican by birth, a mill­wright by trade; “but to build a flour mill re­quires lum­ber, and lum­ber calls for a sawmill.”

“We will build it, too,” said Sut­ter. “Take a man and pro­vi­sions and go up to­ward the moun­tains; there must be good places on my land. I leave it all in your hands.” The place was found on a swift moun­tain stream. Near the present site of Colo­ma, in the midst of pine forests, on the wa­ter soon to be so well known as the Amer­ican Riv­er, the sawmill was lo­cat­ed. Mar­shall al­so marked out a rough wag­on road forty-​five miles long down to the fort. Cap­tain Sut­ter was de­light­ed.

“Set to work as soon as you like, Mar­shall,” he ex­claimed. “This is your busi­ness.” Soon the mill was built and al­most ready for use.

“You may let the wa­ter in­to the mill race to-​night,” said Mar­shall to his men. “I want to test it and al­so to car­ry away some of the loose dirt in the bed.”

Down came the wa­ter with a rush, car­ry­ing off be­fore it the loose earth; all night it ran, leav­ing the race with a clean, smooth bed. The next day, Mon­day, Jan­uary 24, 1848,–won­der­ful day for Cal­ifor­nia–James Mar­shall went out to look at the mill race to see if ev­ery­thing was ready to be­gin work.

“To-​mor­row,” thought he, “we will com­mence saw­ing, and put things through as fast as pos­si­ble. The men are wait­ing, we have plen­ty of trees down, there is noth­ing to hin­der;” but at that mo­ment as he walked be­side the bed of the tail race he saw some glit­ter­ing yel­low par­ti­cles among its sands. He stopped and picked one up. The gold­en touch had come.

The fol­low­ing is Mar­shall’s own de­scrip­tion as pub­lished in the Cen­tu­ry Mag­azine (Vol. 41). “It made my heart thump, for I was cer­tain it was gold. Yet it did not seem to be of the right col­or; all the gold coin I had seen was of a red­dish tinge; this looked more like brass. I re­called to mind all the met­als I had seen or heard of, but I could find none that re­sem­bled this. Sud­den­ly the idea flashed across my mind that it might be iron pyrites. I trem­bled to think of it.”

Fi­nal­ly, to make sure, Mar­shall, like Juan Lopez, mount­ed his horse and rode away to find some one with more knowl­edge than him­self. That some one was Cap­tain Sut­ter, who looked in his en­cy­clo­pe­dia, prob­ably the on­ly one in the ter­ri­to­ry at that time, and by com­par­ing the weight of the met­al with the weight of an equal bulk of wa­ter found its spe­cif­ic grav­ity, which proved it to be gold. Still Sut­ter thought that he should like bet­ter au­thor­ity. Gen­er­al Sher­man, in Mem­oirs, tells how the news came to Mon­terey, where, he was the gov­er­nor’s gay young mil­itary sec­re­tary:–

“I re­mem­ber one day, in the spring of 1848, that two men, Amer­icans, came in­to the of­fice and in­quired for the Gov­er­nor. I asked their busi­ness, and one an­swered that they had just come down from Cap­tain Sut­ter on spe­cial busi­ness and they want­ed to see Gov­er­nor Ma­son in per­son. I took them in to the colonel and left them to­geth­er. Af­ter some time the colonel came to his door and called to me. I went in and my at­ten­tion was di­rect­ed to a se­ries of pa­pers un­fold­ed on his ta­ble, in which lay about half an ounce of plac­er gold.

“Ma­son said tome, ‘What is that?’ I touched it and ex­am­ined one or two of the larg­er pieces and asked, ‘Is it gold?’ I said that if that were gold it could be eas­ily test­ed, first by its mal­leabil­ity and next by acids. I took a piece in my teeth and the metal­lic lus­tre was per­fect. I then called to the clerk, Baden, to bring in an ax and hatch­et from the back­yard. When these were brought, I took the largest piece and beat it out flat, and be­yond doubt it was met­al and a pure met­al. Still we at­tached lit­tle im­por­tance to the fact, for gold was known to ex­ist at San Fer­nan­do at the south and yet was not con­sid­ered of much val­ue.”

About this time some of the busi­ness men who had set­tled in the lit­tle town of Yer­ba Bue­na, find­ing that all ships that en­tered the har­bor were sent by their own­ers not to Yer­ba Bue­na, of which they knew noth­ing, but to San Fran­cis­co, per­suad­ed the town coun­cil to change the name of the set­tle­ment from Yer­ba Bue­na to San Fran­cis­co, which was al­ready the name of the mis­sion and pre­sidio.

“Gold! Gold!! Gold!!! from the Amer­ican Riv­er,” cried a horse­man from the mines, rid­ing down Mar­ket Street, wav­ing his hat in one hand, a bot­tle of gold dust in the oth­er.

When words like these dropped from the lips of a mes­sen­ger in any of the lit­tle com­mu­ni­ties, the re­sult was like a pow­er­ful ex­plo­sion. Ev­ery­body scat­tered, not wound­ed and dy­ing, how­ev­er, but full of life, ready to en­dure any­thing, risk any­thing, for the sake of find­ing the pre­cious met­al which en­ables its own­er to have for him­self and those he loves the com­fort­able and beau­ti­ful things of the world.

The re­sult at San Fran­cis­co is thus de­scribed in one of its news­pa­pers of 1848: “Stores are closed, places of busi­ness va­cat­ed, a num­ber of hous­es ten­ant­less, me­chan­ical la­bor sus­pend­ed or giv­en up en­tire­ly, nowhere the pleas­ant hum of in­dus­try salutes the ear as of late; but as if a curse had ar­rest­ed our on­ward course of en­ter­prise, ev­ery­thing wears a des­olate, som­bre look. All through the Sun­days the lit­tle church on the plaza is silent. All through the week the door of the al­calde’s of­fice re­mains locked. As for the ship­ping, it is left at an­chor; first sailors, then of­fi­cers de­part­ing for the mines.”

And how was it at the log­ging camp where Mar­shall made his great dis­cov­ery? The new sawmill, built with such high hopes, was soon silent and de­sert­ed. No more logs were cut, and no lum­ber hauled down for the flour mill. There were no men to be found who were will­ing to cut and saw logs, build mills, or put in the spring wheat when they might be find­ing their for­tunes at the mines.

The new­ly ar­rived em­igrants suf­fered no doubt from hunger; maybe the chil­dren cried for bread; but most of the men, as soon as they had rest­ed a lit­tle and knew what was go­ing on, got to­geth­er mon­ey enough to buy the sim­ple im­ple­ments of knife, pan, pick, and cra­dle, which were all the tools nec­es­sary for the easy plac­er min­ing of those days, and joined the end­less pro­ces­sion of those who were push­ing up to­ward the streams and canyons round Sut­ter’s fa­mous sawmill.

As sum­mer came on, the ex­cite­ment be­came in­tense. Not on­ly from the re­gion around San Fran­cis­co Bay, but from San Diego and Los An­ge­les, peo­ple came flock­ing to the mines. Re­ports were cur­rent of men find­ing hun­dreds of dol­lars’ worth of gold a day, gain­ing a for­tune in a few weeks. It was al­most im­pos­si­ble to hire la­bor­ers ei­ther in San Fran­cis­co or on the ranch­es. Even the sol­diers caught the gold fever and de­sert­ed.

In the sum­mer, Gov­er­nor Ma­son and Lieu­tenant Sher­man vis­it­ed the mines. Up­on their re­turn to Mon­terey, hav­ing seen for them­selves that many even of the wildest ru­mors were true, they made ar­range­ments to send on to Wash­ing­ton of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment of the dis­cov­ery.

How this was ac­com­plished is in­ter­est­ing. A lieu­tenant of the army was ap­point­ed by the gov­er­nor for the im­por­tant of­fice, and a can of sam­ple gold was pur­chased.

The on­ly ves­sel on the coast ready for de­par­ture was a boat bound for Pe­ru. On this ship the lieu­tenant with his pot of gold and the gov­er­nor’s re­port em­barked at Mon­terey. He reached the Pe­ru­vian port just in time to catch the British steam­er back to Pana­ma. Cross­ing the Isth­mus on horse­back, he took a steam­er for Kingston, Ja­maica. There he found a ves­sel just leav­ing for New Or­leans. Reach­ing that city he at once tele­graphed the news to Wash­ing­ton, trust­ing it would be in time to form part of the Pres­ident’s mes­sage.

On De­cem­ber 5, 1848, the Pres­ident, in his mes­sage to Congress, af­ter speak­ing of the dis­cov­ery of gold in Cal­ifor­nia, said, “The ac­counts of the abun­dance of gold in that ter­ri­to­ry are of such ex­traor­di­nary char­ac­ter as would scarce­ly com­mand be­lief but for the au­then­tic re­ports of of­fi­cers in the pub­lic ser­vice who have vis­it­ed the min­er­al dis­tricts and drew the facts which they de­tail from per­son­al ob­ser­va­tion.”

The cer­tain­ty that the won­der­ful re­ports of the gold coun­try were true, elec­tri­fied not on­ly the whole coun­try but the whole civ­ilized world. Large num­bers of peo­ple be­gan im­me­di­ate prepa­ra­tion for mak­ing the over­land jour­ney as soon as the weath­er should per­mit; while oth­ers, too im­pa­tient to wait, left for Cal­ifor­nia by the way of the Isth­mus.

In Febru­ary, 1849, there ar­rived at Mon­terey the Pana­ma, the first steam­boat to vis­it the coast. The whole pop­ula­tion turned out to see and wel­come it. The Cal­ifor­ni­ans as they com­pared it with the state­ly frigates and ships they had been ac­cus­tomed to see, ex­claimed, “How ug­ly!” Al­though it was not a beau­ti­ful ves­sel, its ar­rival was an event of great im­por­tance, for it was the first of a line of steam­ers which were un­der con­tract to ply month­ly be­tween San Fran­cis­co and Pana­ma, and with its com­ing be­gan such an im­mi­gra­tion as the world has sel­dom known.

In 1849 near­ly twen­ty-​five thou­sand peo­ple came by land and al­most as many more by sea, from the States alone. There were be­tween thir­ty and forty thou­sand from oth­er parts of the world.

San Fran­cis­co at the time of the dis­cov­ery had about sev­en hun­dred in­hab­itants, and short­ly af­ter on­ly the pop­ula­tion of a ham­let, be­cause so many had gone to the gold fields. Now it sud­den­ly found it­self called up­on to give shel­ter to thou­sands of peo­ple bound for the mines, and many al­so re­turn­ing, some suc­cess­ful, oth­ers pen­ni­less and ea­ger to get work at the very high wages of­fered, some­times as much as thir­ty dol­lars a day.

There were streets to be sur­veyed, hous­es and ware­hous­es to be built, lum­ber and brick to be pro­vid­ed. Peo­ple were liv­ing in tents, in brush hous­es, even in shel­ter made by four up­right green poles over which were spread mat­ting and old bed­ding. Hun­dreds of ships lay help­less in the har­bor wait­ing for crews, of­ten for men to un­load the car­goes. No longer could the pa­pers com­plain of lack of busi­ness. The town was like a hive, but such a dis­or­der­ly one as would have driv­en wild any colony of bees.

All was mud flats or wa­ter where are now the wa­ter front and some of the lead­ing busi­ness streets of the city. On these flats old un­sea­wor­thy ves­sels were drawn up and did du­ty side by side with rough board build­ings as dwellings and stores. In the rainy sea­sons the streets were lakes of mud where mules and drays were some­times lit­er­al­ly sub­merged. The ar­rival of the mail steam­er was the event of the month to this host of peo­ple so far away from home and loved ones. Guns were fired, bells rang to an­nounce the ap­proach of the ves­sel, then there was a wild rush to the post of­fice, where the long lines of men, most of them wear­ing flan­nel shirts, wide hats, and high boots, ex­tend­ed far down the street. Very high prices were some­times paid, as high even as one hun­dred dol­lars, by a late cor­ner to buy from some one lucky enough to be near the head of the line a po­si­tion near the de­liv­ery win­dow. Then if no let­ter came, how great was the dis­ap­point­ment!

One man thus de­scribed the mines:–

“I was but a lad and my par­ty took me along on­ly be­cause I had a knack at cook­ing and was will­ing to do any­thing in or­der to see the place where such won­der­ful for­tunes were made. It was a hot sum­mer af­ter­noon when, cross­ing a re­gion of low, thin­ly wood­ed hills, we looked down up­on Amer­ican Riv­er; away to the east were high moun­tain ranges, their peaks, al­though it was still Au­gust, snow-​tipped.

“From them came swift­ly down the al­ready fa­mous riv­er. Its vol­ume was ev­ident­ly di­min­ished from the heat, and along its grav­el­ly bed men were dig­ging the sand and grav­el in­to buck­ets. As I reached them and watched them work I was great­ly dis­ap­point­ed. It seemed like very or­di­nary dirt they were han­dling; I saw no gleam of the yel­low sands of which I had heard such sto­ries. I fol­lowed one of the men who car­ried the buck­ets of earth to some­thing that looked very like our fam­ily cra­dle with the foot­board knocked out. Where the slats might have been there was nailed a piece of sheet iron punched full of holes. Above this was a chute in which the dirt was emp­tied. The cra­dle was then rocked vi­olent­ly while wa­ter was poured over its con­tents. The lighter earth and grav­el were car­ried away, while the gold, be­ing heav­ier, rest­ed ei­ther on the sheet iron or be­tween the slats on the cra­dle bot­tom.

“Some of the men had no cra­dle, on­ly a large pan made of sheet iron. This pan, when half filled with dirt, was sunk in the wa­ter and shak­en side­wise un­til the dirt and grav­el were washed away and on­ly heavy grains of gold re­mained. There were enough of these to make my eyes open wide. The men who had the cra­dle were mak­ing pret­ty steadi­ly from eigh­teen to twen­ty dol­lars a day apiece.

“Af­ter a day or two I vis­it­ed the dry dig­gings. Here I saw things that were more as­ton­ish­ing to me than any­thing that I had seen at the plac­er mines. Some men were at work in a lit­tle canyon, and I sat on the bowlder and watched them dig­ging in­to the earth with their knives and pick­ing up ev­ery few min­utes spoons of earth in which there were plain­ly vis­ible lit­tle lumps of gold the size of a pea. This was con­sid­ered a rich find; the men were joy­ful over their suc­cess. Sud­den­ly one of the old­er ones, look­ing up at me, sang out:–

“Say, Son­ny, why do you sit there idle? Out with that bread knife of yours and dig for your for­tune. Across this ridge is an­oth­er ravine. It may be like this. Try your luck, any­way.’

“Some­how, un­til that mo­ment, it had not en­tered my boy­ish mind, that I might join this great mad race for wealth. I sprang to my feet. My heart be­gan to pound faster than it did on the glo­ri­ous day when in my boy­hood home I had won the mile race at the coun­ty fair. There was a singing in my ears; for the minute I could scarce­ly breathe. I had heard of the gold fever, and now I had caught it.

“I dashed up the hill­side, fair­ly rolled down in­to the rocky lit­tle val­ley be­yond, and be­gan to dig wild­ly; but I found on­ly good hon­est earth, rich no­ble soil so like our fer­tile bot­tom lands at home. My spir­its be­gan to sink, my heart to re­sume its nat­ural beats. I worked half an hour or so with­out find­ing any sign, as it was called, and be­gan to feel dis­cour­aged. In the canyon, which was very nar­row, a large bowlder blocked my progress. I de­ter­mined to dig it loose. This was the work of some time, but fi­nal­ly I suc­ceed­ed in dis­lodg­ing it, and draw­ing up my legs out of its way watched with a young­ster’s de­light its wild dash down the moun­tain side to the stream far be­low.

“Slow­ly I turned to re­sume my work, but what I saw brought me to my feet with a yell. The sock­et where the stone had rest­ed was dot­ted with yel­low lumps of gold as big as a pea, some even larg­er. Down I went up­on my knees and I fell to work with a will–the strength of a man seemed in my arms. Off came my coat, and spread­ing it out I scooped the rich dirt in­to it by the hand­ful. I had hap­pened on a pock­et, as it was called; a turn in the bed of some old moun­tain stream. The dirt from this when washed yield­ed me about five hun­dred dol­lars, but it was all ex­cept cook’s wages that I ev­er made at the mines.

“Be­fore I left the gold fields I saw some small at­tempt at hy­draulic min­ing which lat­er proved so suc­cess­ful. From a stream up in a canyon some en­ter­pris­ing men had built a log flume and con­nect­ed with it a large hose and noz­zle they had brought up from the coast. Turn­ing the wa­ter in this on a dry hill rich in gold de­posit, they eas­ily and rapid­ly washed the dirt down in­to a sluice or trough be­low. This had bars nailed across, and wa­ter run­ning through car­ried the dirt away while the gold dropped in­to the crevices be­tween the bars.” This method of min­ing and al­so quartz min­ing, that is, dig­ging gold and oth­er met­als from rock, is de­scribed in an­oth­er chap­ter.

The gold-​bear­ing earth ex­tend­ed along the west slope of the Sier­ra Neva­da and their base, from Feath­er Riv­er on the north to the Merced Riv­er on the south, a ter­ri­to­ry about thir­ty miles wide by two hun­dred and fifty long. In this dis­trict are still some of the rich­est mines in the world.