CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

and gold and how the state suddenly grew when gold was found more than 400 years ago a man in Spain wrote it island in the faraway ocean California and said it was ruled by a queen Khalifa this is truly a golden island he wrote even the tools and weapons are all made of gold in fact no other metal can be found looked for gold in California but very little gold was found then on the 24th of January 1848 Jim Marshall a carpenter spotted something shiny in the tailrace of a new lumber mill he was building the tailrace is the channel through which the water leaves the mill he picked up some yellow flakes in the small lump of metal this is the very piece of metal Marshall found it was a nugget of pure gold and it is now kept in the Bancroft library of the University of California of course Marshall couldn't know then that his precious fine not quite an inch long would cause many changes in California the United States yes even the rest of the world he wasn't even sure he had found gold to test his find he asked mrs. Wimmer the camp cook to boil it in soap here in her own handwriting is what she said about it in 1848 mr. Marshall picked up a nugget of metal and mr. Wimmer sent it to the house to me by our son and I boiled it in a kettle of soap all day to see if it was gold it proved to be a nugget of gold from this the mining began now Marshall hurried 50 miles south to Fort Sutter to tell his boss captain Sutter an immigrant from Switzerland had landed in yerba buena which is now San Francisco a few years earlier to Mae a new life in America the fort he built by the sacramental River has been restored as a state monument exactly as it was in Sutter's time in this room which you can still see today Jim Marshall told his boss captain I believe I found gold by the mill Sutter jumped from his chair what did you say what did you say Gold come to my private office behind closed door as they tested the metal with acids and weighed it it was heavier than silver now they knew it was really gold they tried to keep it secret but the new was leaked out first to San Francisco paper printed a small item about it gold was found in Sutter's Mill on the American River it said from San Francisco the news spread first to eastern ports later to Europe before the year was over many stories and books were printed on California and how to get there first in the eastern United States then in England and Sweden Poland and Germany and France in France they even had a lottery with a trip to California's main prize and they printed coloured pictures with their stories this is how easy it will be when you get there they said just do a little digging and pick up the pieces of gold in no time you'll be back home with a servant carrying the treasure for you the big Gold Rush started early in 18-49 that's why the gold seekers are called the 49ers they came here from the east coast and then from Europe and later even from China from the east there were three ways to get to California by ship around Cape Horn by ship to Panama overland through the jungle and on another ship to San Francisco the third route was across the country with horse and wagon or on foot there were several trails all dangerous hostile Indians waterless desert steep mountains it took six months from the east to fort Sutter only a hundred days to San Francisco advertised the ship in Boston and New York travel and comfort to the gold country the ships had fancy names and the average trip cost $400 and people fought for the tickets not until they were aboard did they find out the bitter truth we learn of their sad experiences through shipboard Diaries that some of them kept Diaries that are now rare collectors items here we are told how they got sick from the rotten food and how they had to sleep on stacks of ropes on the open deck because the ships were so crowded and how they had to pay a high price for just a drink of fresh water when they made stopovers but all the hardship seemed forgotten when they finally caught sight of Fort Sutter soon they would all be rich the thousands of early settlers that came through San Francisco didn't mind that at first there were only tents to house them expecting life to be rough they had left their women folk at home soon as San Francisco there were simple wooden houses and shops where the newcomers could buy equipment and supplies for the mines for $50 they take a riverboat to Sacramento near Fort Sutter Sacramento was then just a landing place often after heavy rains the river overflowed but Sacramento was the last stop before the Gold Country from here the miners headed straight for Coloma by the American River 50 miles up north where the first gold had been found now the spot is very peaceful and quiet in 18-49 about 2,000 miners camp right here staking the claim every 10 square feet and refusing to leave though the land was leased by Sutter but gold seemed to be everywhere and soon the mining spread from Mariposa and Columbia down south to down evil Deer Creek and dry diggings town sprang up almost overnight all over the valley there were men with chisels with the pickaxe and the gold pan later some miners rigged up wooden boxes called long Tom's but the simple panning Bowl was the basic tool of the early miners nearly 200 thousand of them [Music] most of them were up at sunrise so their books tell us working at the diggings all day and they often took the law into their own hands especially in disputes over claims then as the gold got more scarce someone figured out that a heavy jet of water directed against a river bank would wash down the surface dirt and rock much faster and it would bring in more gold it did and with hydraulic mining as it was called the total gold found in four years was worth five hundred million dollars but at the same time as whole mountain sides were washed down the dirt and boulders buried good farmlands and ruined the forests you can easily spot hydraulic mining sites even today nothing will grow in the barren dirt because of that a law was passed prohibiting hydraulic mining now that the easy River gold was gone the miners looked to the High Sierras whence the rivers came or samples were brought to Nevada City and tested in the assayer's office they proved to be very rich in silver and gold but it would cost money to mined deep inside the mountain fast because of the gold not by digging but by selling supplies to miners men like Leland Stanford Collis Huntington Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker they form big companies and put their money into the Comstock mines near Virginia City Nevada where hundreds of miners work thousands of feet below the surface in galleries and passageways breaking the or loose when an underground stream flooded the mines they hired out off Sutro to build a five-mile long sloping tunnel under the mountains now the water could run off and it was easier to get the ore to the stamping mills where it was crushed and the gold and silver washed out untold millions were thus taken out of mount Davidson and gold hill until the mountains were like hollow shells looking at Virginia City today it's hard to believe that not so long ago it was a city crowded with 50,000 people all trying to get rich in a hurry now that the roughest time was over they wanted some comfort and the better things of life they went to pipers opera for the best entertainment that could be had in those days and if they liked the performers they rewarded them with gold nuggets thrown onto the stage at the gambling tables they often lost their fortunes faster than they had made them because money had come easy they thought it would always be that way but then the mountain treasures were exhausted the slag heaps ceased growing mining cars and or wagons were left where they stood in the deserted mining towns everything fell into disrepair the homes the shops even the church another ghost town was born on the hills overlooking Virginia City and the other ghost towns of the Comstock you can see the cemeteries where many of the miners live buried they came here from all over the world they did not get rich but the wealth they created built the first transcontinental railroad link and brought a never-ending stream of immigrants to California in a hundred years a short time as cities grow yerba buena village had become modern San Francisco the financial center of the West and we're the early immigrants had landed to get to Fort Sutter there is now the city of Sacramento the capital of California it's quiet now in the Gold Country some sleepy little towns like Nevada City the old dried diggings [Music] Columbia with its old Wells Fargo Express office is now a state historical monument a fiddle town only the post office and a few old homes are left and here and there the remnants of Mines an old Chinese Laundry sign or a signpost in the middle of nowhere bearing strange names like you bet and Red Dog but no towns at all of course some have survived and made a comeback old hang town for example so named for its Swift punishment of lawbreakers is now Placerville thriving on lumber farming and tourists they're still hunting gold up there churning up the riverbeds with monstrous dredges and scooping up dirt from which a little gold is washed out and here and there you'll see the headframe of the deep rock mines still in operation miners now use power drills to break the or loose its then brought to the surface refined [Music] and poured into shiny gold bars but modern mining is very expensive and no one gets rich on it yes and once in a great while as you travel along the American River you may spot an old-timer who doesn't have much else to do descending the river bank with pick shovel and pan he'll cut loose some dirt and wash it in the river hoping to clear a couple of dollars worth of gold dust there is a monument of rocks where Sutter's Mill once stood sutter himself died in poverty Jim Marshall died poor too he never found any more gold high atop his grave on a hill overlooking the river stands his statue one hand pointing to the spot down below where he made his great discovery a few shiny flakes and a small lump of yellow metal the nugget of gold that excited the imagination of the whole world the golden key to the golden state of California [Music]