California Gold Rush: Coloma to San Francisco

On 24 January 1848 James W. Marshall found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill he was building for the Sacramento pioneer John Sutter. That small find set off the Gold Rush. Today the site is a state historic park. A statue of Marshall stands on a monument on the hill, pointing to the spot where he made his discovery, and the Gold Discovery Museum shows mining equipment, horse-drawn vehicles and household implements from the period.

Visitor guidance: Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, with a museum and the Marshall monument.

Four days later, on 28 January 1848, Marshall met privately with Sutter inside the fort's adobe main building and showed him the gold. Tests confirmed it, and Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted the news kept quiet. He was right to worry. His workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle. The two-story adobe is the only original structure in the reconstructed state historic park.

Visitor guidance: Sutter's Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento; the original adobe is the building to look for.

The secret did not hold. In San Francisco the newspaper publisher and merchant Sam Brannan set up a store to sell prospecting supplies, bought pans for 20 cents and resold them for $15. On 11 May 1848 he showed his gold to a crowd at the plaza, and walked through the streets holding aloft a vial and shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" The town of about 1,000 people grew to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850. Portsmouth Square, the old Plaza de Yerba Buena, was its first public square and is a park today.

Visitor guidance: Portsmouth Square is a public park in San Francisco, with historical markers and memorials.

Miners first called this camp Dry Diggin's, after the way they moved cartloads of dry soil to wash out gold. Later in 1849 it earned the name Hangtown, after numerous hangings. In one case, three wanted men were hanged on an oak tree on Main Street by a mob, without any trial. The town took the name Placerville in 1854, when it was incorporated. Gold Bug Park & Mine is now a museum with tours.

Location precision: The sources place the hanging oak on Main Street without naming an exact spot; the pin marks Main Street in Placerville.

Visitor guidance: Main Street runs through the old town; Gold Bug Park & Mine in Placerville offers tours.

John Walker found gold here on 27 March 1850, in one of the richest finds of the Gold Rush. Over the next years a network of water supply aqueducts, costing over $1 million, was built to support the mining. A boomtown grew, with a population between 2,000 and 5,000 in the 1850s. Today the old town is a state historic park run as an inhabited, working open-air museum, where people in period costume run a candy store and a daguerreotype studio.

Visitor guidance: Columbia State Historic Park; costumed docents lead living-history programs.