While inspecting a sawmill he was building for John Sutter, carpenter James Marshall noticed glinting metal in the millrace and realized it was gold. News spread slowly at first, but within a year tens of thousands of prospectors from across the world had poured into California, permanently transforming its economy, population, and place in the American imagination.
Marshall reportedly picked the flakes from the water, bit one to test its softness, and declared, 'Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine.' Sutter tried to keep the discovery quiet, worried it would ruin his agricultural empire by drawing away his workers — a fear that proved entirely justified.
Within months, word leaked out, and by 1849 the trickle became a flood: some 300,000 people, the '49ers,' rushed to California by wagon, ship, and foot from across America, Latin America, Europe, and China. San Francisco exploded from a small settlement into a boomtown virtually overnight.
The Gold Rush accelerated California's admission as a state in 1850, devastated Native American communities through disease and violence, and minted the mythology of the American West as a place of instant fortune — even though most miners, including Marshall himself, died poor.
Key people: James Marshall, John Sutter