Gold!
On January 24, 1848, a man named James Marshall discovered gold in what is now the town of Coloma, California. At the time, he wasn’t looking for it.
Marshall was a business partner of John Sutter, who needed lumber to develop extensive land holdings in what is now California. The deal: Sutter would finance the construction of a sawmill, and Marshall would build it.
The original Sutter’s Mill didn’t last long. It was completely washed away by the South Fork of the American River, which flows just to the left of the photo above.
The mill you see here is a reconstruction, built to the original plans. Marshall placed his mill near the river because it relied on water power to drive its saw. Water was diverted from the river to run through the mill race (the ditch in the foreground). Water pressure turned the water wheel visible at the bottom of the building, which in turn operated a saw on the upper level.
Marshall had trouble getting water to flow freely enough to drive the saw, and so his workers kept digging at the mill race. One day, while inspecting that work, Marshall looked down at the water trickling past his feet and, using only his hand, scooped up some flakes of metal.
What he said on that occasion is known: “Boys, by God I believe I’ve found a gold mine!” The boys were skeptical.
They suspected the presence of iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, so they ran tests. The metal flakes were bent, bitten, hammered with a rock, and, finally, soaked in lye.
The verdict: Gold!
The result, according to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where the mill is located, was “The largest voluntary mass migration of people in history.”
The park, eight miles north of Placerville and Route 50, also features a majestic statue of James Marshall pointing to the spot where he discovered the gold. In real life, he and Sutter likely felt much less than majestic about the whole thing. They both died in poverty.