This huge event started with the findings of one man, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey. On January 24th in the year 1848 he found flakes of gold in the American River which is located at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains nearby the city of Coloma, California.
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"It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold"
-James Wilson Marshall
This discovery of gold was made just days before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, which gave the US ownership of California and other things like ending the Mexican American war. In the middle of March the same year, word got out locally about the gold found but beliefers were few. But then a local store keeper, Sam Brannan went around the town of San Francisco with a vial containing gold from Sutter's Creek. After this about three fourths of the males in San Francisco left in the pursuit of gold. News of this discovery of gold spread even farther and some of the first to arrive were those who went by boat like the people from Sandwich Islands (current day Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru, and China. But this rush didn't truly happen until the December of 1848 when President James K. Polk in his inaugural address announced the positive result for a report by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military governor, which confirmed the existence of gold in the area.
"The accounts of abundance of gold are such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in public service."
-President James K. Polk
Throughout the year 1849 people, the majority of which was men, borrowed money, mortgages their property, and spent their life savings in order to get to California. Thousands of these people, called '49ers traveled across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or Cape Horn.
The findings and amount of people of this event in history are immense. Two billion dollars worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during this time. Which equaled more than 750,000 pounds of gold. But this event also propelled other events like California's admission to the Union making it the 31st state of the US.
The findings and amount of people of this event in history are immense. Two billion dollars worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during this time. Which equaled more than 750,000 pounds of gold. But this event also propelled other events like California's admission to the Union making it the 31st state of the US.