TWHP

The Players:     John Sutter    Sam Brannan    William Sherman   
The Gold Rush

The Find that Energized America




Nothing like it had ever happened in the course of human events. For the first time in recorded history, anybody, it seemed, could get rich. It all began in January, 1848, when John Marshall found nuggets of gold in the American River where he was building a saw mill for John Sutter.

Sutter knew that should news of the discovery leak out his plans for a great agrarian empire would be threatened, and his own efforts to claim the gold fields failed. He realized his worst fears as all available laborers in the state headed for the diggings after Sam Brannan--his business partner--ran through the streets of San Francisco trumpeting the news, nuggets in hand. His fields, mills and shops deserted, Sutter's fortunes began a long, slow decline as the Mother Lode became an international sensation.

Within months, 4,000 men were slogging through the rivers of the territory looking for gold, and in July, California's military governor Colonel Richard Mason toured the area with Lieutenant William Sherman to investigate the sensation. Discovering the reports of wealth for the taking to be true, Mason sent to Washington, DC, a box of gold; in December, President James Polk addressed Congress on the topic, confirming the stupendous rumors.

By then, men from all over the Pacific Rim were in California, or on their way: Mexicans from the silver mines of Potosi, along with Chileans, Peruvians, Australians and Chinese who lived along established maritime ports of call. But it was in 1849 that the great flood began, with men from all over the United States heading West by ship around Cape Horn or down to the Isthmus of Panama where they crossed through the jungles and fought for space on any ship heading north from that Pacific Coast. Still others just walked for six months or more to make the trek.

Every young man in the country with a spirit of adventure headed to California's gold fields, and there were many by then. The Mexican War of 1846 concluded finally with the Treaty of Hidalgo in February 1848, and California--along with the just discovered gold--was American property. A significant portion of the male population had participated in the campaign, and learned to live rough and enjoy it. In Missouri, legions of pro-slavery advocates from throughout the South--more restless young men--had congregated to promote the institution. They, too, knew life in the wilderness, and went West. And Kentucky, a state populated by several generations of pioneer woodsmen, also supplied more than its share of emigrants.

They also journeyed from everywhere else in the country, though without the same clear group identities as the latter. They abandoned shops, farms and factories across the land to chase the gold, all comprising that grand fraternity of the "49ers," those who came in the year following the President's confirmation of wealth for the taking. It was easiest for those along the Mississippi River or the Atlantic Seaboard, but a little distance to find a vessel was no impediment to the inlanders; they, too, made a way to the major ports of Boston, New York or New Orleans to begin the voyage. Before long, the Europeans followed, especially from France, Germany and Ireland--all beset by political upheaval at home and bewitched by gold abroad. They departed for the most memorable experiences of their lives.

During their travels, they made new friends and partners, sometimes shedding the old, as they searched for like-minded companions in an ongoing process of shifting alliances. On arrival in San Francisco, they encountered a forest of ship masts obscuring the view of the chaotic settlement of random wood structures and innumerable tents, separated by muddy or rutted streets. Impromptu casinos, stores, hotels and saloons beckoned from every direction, with prices unimaginably exorbitant. Men, languages and costumes of every variety dazzled their senses. Chinese in Mandarin collars, Mexican Californios under wide sombreros, poncho-clad South Americans, top-hatted, frock-coated Easterners. But the most ubiquitous uniform belonged to the miner, clothed most commonly in red shirt, dark pants, broad, black hat and knee-high boots.

They escaped from the City as quickly as possible, if only to conserve money and earn more, so punishing were the costs of everything. Most boarded steamers to Sacramento or Stockton from where they began the hike into the Sierra foothills and the myriad stream and river beds already populated by the men who arrived first. Those were the ones who plucked the easy pickings, nuggets sitting in the gravel under clear water, or stuck in rocks and pried out with a Bowie knife.

Most used their picks and shovels, throwing a spadeful of riverbottom or creekside earth into a wide, shallow pan of water, swirling, shaking and spilling so that everything drained out except for the small flakes of gold. A little later, they developed the long tom, a cradle-like device with riffles on the bottom, set at a slant so aggregate and water could flow through, as it was rocked side-to-side; again, the gold remained as the rest trickled off. They spent their days wet, working for hours at a time in waist-deep water. The miners covered river bars and banks throughout the mountains as they pushed deeper into the wilderness where the most hopeful diggings exploded into large camps, and then towns.

Downieville, Columbia, Angels Camp and dozens more grew into booming communities, becoming supply and entertainment centers for their immediate regions as the diggings took the men farther into the wilds. A shared American culture led them to develop laws and rules as they went along, most respecting the evolved concensus. Leaving a pick and shovel on a chunk of land marked a claim, usually 15 or 20 feet square, and it was honored. Theft was uncommon, and when it became a problem, the men reluctantly responded, occasionally with a flogging, ear-cropping or hanging--but most often after some kind of trial. Harsh as the measures may have seemed, they generally worked. The old journals all talk of the honesty and sense of safety that usually prevailed in a once-lawless land, and the widespread sense of generosity became legend. A grassroots civilization thrived such that when official government came, a modicum of order already existed among men come from across the globe.

Within a couple of years of the first reports of gold, the early benign chaos adopted a less pleasant anarchy as surly latercomers squatted on the land or claims of others, and crooked politicians and failed lawyers from the East preyed on those too busy with productive industry to waste time on paper machinations. Over time, however, the honest miners and straight businessmen prevailed, the forces of order and fairness vanquishing the worst iniquities.

Many suffered disillusionment at the hard work, or disappointment in the rewards, turning to other endeavors in the realization that fortunes could be made without brutal toil in lonely environs. Sam Brannan, California's first millionaire, never bothered to try mining himself; instead, he set up stores, sold real estate, constructed hotels and founded Yuba City, all part of the infrastructure that made the mining possible. William Ralston, the man who built San Francisco, took several years to make it to the City; he tarried in Panama, forging connections in the shipping and banking industries that would make him rich years later. William Sherman, the young lieutenant who'd accompanied Colonel Mason on the first government scrutiny of the gold fields, became a banker and financed the first train in the State, between Sacramento and Folsom; afterward, he went on to win the Civil War. Collis P. Huntington opened a hardware store in Sacramento, becoming prosperous enough to consider financing a train route across the country; after building the Transcontinental Railroad, he became one of the wealthiest men in the world.

There are no great fortunes readily identifiable as having derived from mining gold during the rush, but many of the miners made enough to return home and buy the farm of their hopes, while others stayed and settled in California on land they discovered and admired on the way to the diggings. In that respect, the Gold Rush was a very democratic rush for riches, the returns widely distributed. Toward the end of the 1850s, the extraction became more difficult and costly, eventually leading to hydraulic mining, a process by which rivers were harnessed to blast their waters into hillsides, large dredges separating the gold from the grit. Portions of mountain literally disappeared into rivers and streams, the debris going on to silt up everything below, causing flooding in Sacramento and clogging waterways all the way to San Francisco Bay; some of the first environmental legislation in the country resulted, the practice halted.

As the '50s passed on and the gold played out, San Francisco and California suffered a depression; but by then a state existed, with countless towns, several sizable cities, and transport to link them. Farms and businesses abounded, along with a largely male population that felt as if it could achieve anything.

Among that number were John Mackay and James Fair, the former a miner who remained broke up to the 1860s, the latter a supervisor of some of the larger-scale gold mining efforts who emerged prosperous from the rush, if not wealthy. They took what they learned to the Comstock Lode, where silver was discovered in the Nevada mountains just as the gold finds diminished. It would prove to be one of the greatest concentrations of treasure ever known. The riches flowed west to San Francisco, ending the depression, transforming the City and stunning the world all over again.

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