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The Gold Rush

The discovery of gold in California stimulated imaginations around the world. But getting to gold country was not easy. Americans in the East could sail 18,000 miles around the tip of South America; or sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, slog through the jungle to the Pacific, and wait for a ship to San Francisco; or walk overland across the continent. Nothing got easier when they arrived in California. The West presented emigrants with unprecedented challenges and only occasionally fulfillment.

DOCUMENT 1

James Marshall, Account of His Discovery of Gold, 1848

On January 24, 1848, while building a sawmill on the American River for Swiss rancher John Sutter, James Marshall found gold. Marshall gave several accounts of his discovery, but this is probably his first. Marshall never benefited from his discovery and died bitter and penniless.

One morning in January—it was a clear, cold morning; I shall never forget that morning—as I was taking my usual walk along the race after shutting off the water, my eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and of the shape of a pea. Then I saw another piece. . . .

When I returned to our cabin for breakfast I showed the two pieces to my men. They were all a good deal excited, and had they not thought that the gold only existed in small quantities they would have abandoned everything and left me to finish my job alone. However, to satisfy them, I told them that as soon as we had the mill finished we would devote a week or two to gold hunting and see what we could make out of it.

. . . We thought it our best policy to keep it as quiet as possible till we should have finished our mill. But there was a great number of disbanded Mormon soldiers in and about the fort, and when they came to hear of it, why it just spread like a wildfire, and soon the whole country was in a bustle. . . .

Source: James W. Marshall, “Marshall’s Own Account of the Gold Discovery,” Century Illustrated Magazine, no. 4 (Feb. 1891): 537–39.

DOCUMENT 2

Sarah Royce, Memoir of the Journey to California in 1849

In 1849, Sarah Royce, with her husband and two-year-old daughter, left New York for California. Her memoir of their journey westward by covered wagon recounts the family’s encounters with Indians, cholera, thirst, and hunger. Thirty years later she wrote her memories, and in 1932 her son published them. Here she describes traveling through a desert southwest of Salt Lake City.

There was no moon yet, but by starlight we had for some time seen, only too plainly, the dead bodies of cattle lying here and there on both sides of the road. As we advanced they increased in numbers, and presently we saw two or three wagons. At first we thought we had overtaken a company but, coming close, no sign of life appeared. . . . Everything indicated a complete break down, and a hasty flight. Some animals were lying nearly in front of a wagon, apparently just as they had dropped down, while loose yokes and chains indicated that part of the teams had been driven on, laden probably with some necessaries of life; for the contents of the wagons were scattered in confusion, the most essential articles alone evidently having been thought worth carrying. . . . It was not a very encouraging scene but our four oxen still kept their feet; we would drive on a little farther, out of this scene of ruin, bait them, rest ourselves, and go on. We did so, but soon found that what we supposed an exceptional misfortune must have been the common fate of many companies; for at still shortening intervals, scenes of ruin similar to that just described kept recurring till we seemed to be but the last, little, feeble struggling band at the rear of a routed Army.

Source: Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932), 51–53.

DOCUMENT 3

Daniel B. Woods, Life of a California Miner, 1849

Daniel B. Woods, a Philadelphia schoolteacher, reached the diggings in California in 1849. He soon discovered that mining was very hard work, and he suspected that he would never get rich. He poured his frustration and disillusionment into his diary and after sixteen months quit gold country.

July 9th [1849]. To-day we have made $20 each. One of the conclusions at which we are rapidly arriving is that the “chances of our making a fortune in the old mines are about the same as those in favor of our drawing a prize in a lottery.” No kind of work is so uncertain.

July 10th. We made three dollars each to-day. This life of severe hardship and exposure has affected my health. Our diet consists of hard bread, flour, which we eat half-cooked, and salt pork, with occasionally a salmon which we purchase of the Indians. Vegetables are not to be procured. Our feet are wet all day, while a hot sun shines down upon our heads, and the very air parches the skin like the hot air of an oven. Our drinking water comes down to us thoroughly impregnated with the mineral substances washed through a thousand cradles above us.

After our days of labor, exhausted and faint, we retire—if this word may be applied to the simple act of lying down in our clothes—robbing our feet of their boots to make a pillow of them, and wrapping blankets about us, on a bed of pine boughs, or on the ground, beneath the clear, bright stars of night. . . .

Aug. 23d. After all our preparations and hopes, our toil early and late, toil of the most laborious kind, digging down in the channel of the river till the water was up to our knees, giving ourselves barely time to eat, we have made but $4 each. We sat down on the rocks, and looked at the small ridge of gold in the pan, and at each other. One fell to swearing, another to laughing.

Source: Daniel B. Woods, Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851), 57–63.

Questions for Analysis

Recognize Viewpoints: What was James Marshall’s primary concern after he discovered gold?

Analyze the Evidence: What was Sarah Royce’s initial understanding of her nighttime encounter? How well did Sarah Royce’s and Daniel Woods’s previous experiences prepare them for the gold rush?

Consider the Context: How did the realities of gold rush California fit with the promises of manifest destiny?