Placer Mining in 1848-49

Last year I recounted the story of James Marshall finding a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848. He looked down into the mill race and saw the bright and glittering metal. Like Marshall’s original find, many of the early gold discoveries were made by men who simply spotted […]

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Life Changes in California, June 1848

By the beginning of June 1848 there were around 2,000 miners in the Sierra Nevada foothills above Sutter’s Mill. Most of these men had been in California when gold had been found, as the news was just reaching the far edges of the territory. San Francisco practically emptied in the […]

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