Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1920-12-25
SAW FIRST GOLD MINED IN
 CALIFORNIA IN YEAR l849

Rodney c. Adams, aged S9 years, is the last person alive who saw the first gold mined in California. He was born in Madison County, Illinois, in 1881, and when a child emigrated to Western Missouri with his parents. In 1S47 he went with his parents in the Mormon OK train to what is now Salt Lake City. On the route across the plains his parents dissented from the Mormons in their polygamy doc trines. At the first chance young Adams and his parents pushed on across the Sierras.
 Now Rodney Adams, an aged man living with his granddaughter in Riv- erside County, is the last alive, as far as Californians can find out, who was close to James Marshall when the first golden nuggets were found. He is writing his recollections of Califor- mia before the miners came, and a publisher is awaiting copy as it is slowly ground out. His recollections have been invaluable for Pacific Coast historians.
 "I recall that morning in January, 1S4S, when James Marshall found the first gold" said MT. Adams, as he sat in his granddaughter's home at Hemet, California, the other day. q was vacquero for Captain John Sut- ter, although 1 was but a youth. l was away with cattle the morning Marshall found the gold.
 'I got back to the ranch house late in tho afternoon, and Jim Marshall, who had been building mill race for Sutter's grist mill, was sitting on the house front steps. I recall that Mar shall was more cheerful than usual. "He motioned me to come to him, as I dropped from my mustang, and said in low tones:
 "Rod, what'd you say if 1 could show you this whole country full of gold?"
 "What could say, green boy off the plains? What did I know of pold-crazy world? I kept my mouth shut, and looked wise. Marshall then tooN me to one side, and told me in half-whispers how he had found five chunks of native gold as large as fill berts. He showed me the nuggets, upon which he had eXperimented by boiling, hammering and scraping to find whether they really were gold. Marshall had no idea then that his dis covery was so important. His mind was set on the mill which he had al most finished and on several mechan- ical devices he had invented in it. Among the things he said to me about the gold he had found was that some day he was going to hunt systematl- cally for more gold nuggets and that he might get few thousand dollars of a fortune together in that way. He had absolutely no idea of the vastness of the mining possibilities his discov- cry would lead to.
 "So little did the finding of the gold disturb either of us that l remember that we went to bed early and slept soundly. Marshall cautioned me to keep the gold find secret. But Mar shall was loquacious and he himself bragged of his find. Five days Later several Mexicans brought in more nuggets. Then the Mormons, who were working for Sutter and Mar shall, found gold and the importance of the find increased a little in the minds of Marshall and all of us at the Colma camp. A few years later, when the worlds commerce was turn ed, as Lord Derby said, by thi gold discovery in California, and when more than 3OO,0O0 young men had flocked to California, and had made a new civilization, l wondered how we could have been so blind at first to the meaning of the first nuggets that Marshall picked up.
 "The news did not get down to San Francisco, about 150 miles away, un- til three months later. When the gold was shown him, Captain Sutter said, Yes, that's gold,a nd it will be the curse of us; meaning that it was the end of their schemes for a big sawmill and flour mill along the American River.
 "But another week passed before the belief became general at San Francisco that back in the mountains gold had actually been found. I re- member that educated men argued