Norwich bulletin., 1921-06-10
ODD INCIDENTS IN AMERICAN
 HISTORY
GOLD DISCOVERY IN oA11FoRN1A


 On the afternoon of Monday, January 23, 1848, while John W. Marshall, of New Jersey, was walking in the tail race in the small valley Coloma, Cali fornia, he saw. on it's rotten granite bed rock some yellow particles and picked up some of them. The largest was about the size of a grain of wheat. It was the first discovery of gold in California. In the summer of 1847 the American residents of California, numbering per haps 1000, and mostly established near San Francisco Bay, looked forward with hope and confidence to the future. Their government held secure possession of the whole territory and had announced it's purpose to hold it permanently.
 It so happened that at this time one of the leading representatives of Ameri- can interests in California was John A. Sutter, of Swiss percentage, German i by the place of his birth in Baden, an American by residence and naturalization 1 in Missouri and a Mexican by subse- l quent residence and naturalization in California. In 1889 he had settled at the junction of the Sacramento and American rivers, near the site of the present city of Sacramento. His rancz i became known as Suffers Fort In the summer of 1847 he planned the building of flour mill, and partly to get lum- Der for it he determined to build a saw mill also.
 Since there was no good timber in the lvalley the saw mill must be in the moun- tains This site was selected by Mar shall, named above as the discoverer of the gold. Marshall was a skilled wheel wright by occupation, industrious, hon. est, generous. but cranky, full of wild fancies and defective in some kinds of business sense. The mill was erected 1500 feet above the level of the sea and forty-five miles from Sutter's Fort, from which it was accessible for wagon with out expense of road-making.
 When Marshall discovered the small grains of bright metal and took them tc the mill little attention was paid to his
 story, and. in fact, it was regarded as
 proper subject for ridicule Marshall hammered his new metal and found f nalleable He put 1t into the kitchen firt
 and observed that it did not readily mel
 or become discolored. He compared 1t. coior with gold coin, and the more h,
 examined 1t the more he was convinced
 that it was gold.
 ) He soon found an opportunity to shov . his discovery to Sutter, who tested tn metal with acid, and by careful weigh
 Ing satisfied himself that Marshan's con
 clusion was correct. In the spring o 1s4S San Francisco, a village of abou : 700 inhabitants, had two newspapers The Californian and the California Star both weeklies. The first printed mention
 | of the gold discovery was short para
 graph in the former, under date of tn 3 18th of March, stating that a gold min ] had been discovered at Sutter's Mill, an l before the middle of June the whole ter
 ritory resoupded with the cry of "gold.
 Nearly aI1 the men hurried off to tn
 mines Workshops, stores, dwelling. wives, and even ripe fields of grain, wer ' left for time to take care of them 8 selves. The reports of the discover
 which began to reach the Atlantic state , late in 1S4S commanded little credenc
 there before January, but the news (
 the arrival of large amounts of gold 2 X Mazatlan, Valparaiso, Panama and Ne York, in the latter part of the wfnte = put an end to all doubt and in the sprin
 there was such a rush of peaceful m
 grafton as the world had never seen. o In 1s49 more than 5000 immigrant = went by land and 23,oo0 by sea frol the region east of the Rocky Mountain and by sea perhaps 10000 from othe e parts of the world. The gold yield (
 1s4S was estimated at $5,o00, 900, ths
 of 1S4s at $2s,Oo0,8e0, that of 1850 $