HISTORY

YHGYH

It all started with a man named James W. Marshall of New Jersey. Marshall was hired by John A.Sutter to oversee the construction of Sutters sawmill, which was set up 50 miles away from Sutters Fort. The building went fine, along with the help from the Maidu Indian workers hired to construct the mill. Until that famous day when Marshall found, what he thought of as a small shiny piece of metal, but in fact as he later realized he had found GOLD. He had found the first of many nuggets to be found in the area.

On March 15 of 1848 the California newspaper reported that gold had been found in California by workers on Sutters mill. This news clipping started drawing out prospector, people in search of gold, from all around. Then when more gold was found by Pierson B. Reading "GOLD FEVER" began to sweep San Francisco, almost depopulating the city. The initial rush had produced about $250,000 worth of gold. But by 1852 an amazing 1 million dollars had been excavated. Most mining in 1848 was done by Indians and foreigners, but by 1849 Americans had over populated every mine in California in hope of striking it rich.

Travel to California around this time was done almost solely by land. Either over mountains, plains, or desert the journey was always a difficult one. Many went by wagon alone or in carivans. Sometimes these wagons would take cut-offs, or shortcuts to get to California faster. And occasionally they would end up in places like "DEATH VALLEY" or at dead ends. During the gold rush well over 220,000 people arived at California by various land routes.

Work was hard for the miners even though many of them planed on stricking it rich fast and easy and then returning home with new found wealth. Though work was hard for the miners they had man tools to help. Like pans to sort the gold frome the dirt. This was later improved to the rocker and later to the "long tom". later improvements led to the in vention of Hydrolic mining. Hydrolic mining is when water is sprayed n larg amounts at a rock face to ramove the excese dirt from the rock and make it easier to seperate gold from dirt. Hydrolic mining also led to towns like bloomfield.

After all of the gold had been taken and what was left was hard to find it seems as though all the commotion died down, and so the gold rush ended in 1854 as fast and easily as it started.

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