Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park

Jill's Journal: Determined to find gold, Madelyn and Victoria patrolled the (shallow) edge of the South Fork of the American River today.

John Sutter, whose Sutter’s Fort we visited two weeks ago, seems to have the name most associated with the discovery of gold in California. While it’s true he commissioned a sawmill in late 1847, it was the foreman who built it for him, New Jersey native James W. Marshall, who made the actual discovery on January 24, 1848. Within four days, Marshall and his men had performed all sorts of tests to verify it was, in fact, gold he’d found and Marshall had traveled the approximately 50 miles to Sutter’s Fort to share news of the discovery.

The rest is history. The discovery spawned the greatest mass migration in America’s history. Sometimes it’s even said the Gold Rush triggered the largest human migration for a single purpose since the Crusades. Thousands flocked to the area in search of a better life and to seek their fortune. The 49ers aren’t just a football team (and Forty Niner wasn’t just a champion racehorse by Mr. Prospector in the 1980s). The term forty-niner refers to the approximately 300,000 Argonauts who descended on Gold Country here in Northern California during the Gold Rush. California was fast-tracked to statehood in 1850, before places like Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and West Virginia, and the Transcontinental Railroad became a reality just over a decade later. All because of gold.

The romance of the Gold Rush is tarnished in the statistics: one in 12 forty-niners died. Death and crime were extraordinarily high. Vigilantism was the rule. Less than 10% actually hit it rich and the rest lived in poverty, most too poor to even afford the return home. Fewer than three percent of the population in Gold Rush towns was female and the majority of young bachelors who came out to California to strike it rich never found a wife. We heard one story today about a forty-niner who wanted a family so badly he offered a young mother $50 if he could just hold and kiss her baby for a moment.

But that all happened in the years following Marshall’s discovery on a cold morning in 1848. Today the girls and I made the beautiful drive up the well-named State Route 49. This lovely little road winds through one gold town after another in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Our destination was the town of Coloma (the first permanent town of the Mother Lode) and the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park to see where it all started.

This trench or tiny offshoot of the American River, believed to be dug as a "tailrace" for the mill, is the spot where Marshall spotted those first fateful nuggets of gold. The girls so hoped to repeat his luck, but it was not to be. :)

Just a few yards south is the original site of Sutter’s Mill. These days, there’s a monument on the spot.

A short distance away is a full-scale replica of the mill and a building housing the original timbers excavated from the original site.

The girls were not overly interested in the mill itself, but the river was a different story. Madelyn absolutely did not want to leave until she'd found her own gold. Clearly, I finally talked her into moving on or I think we’d still be there.

But she, and all the girls, got to hold real, raw gold today. A three-ounce nugget, to be exact. This delightful man probably qualifies as a real-life, modern-day prospector. He left his job as a civil engineer and now works at the historic park so he can hunt for gold in his off-hours. He told me he has “gold fever” and he has it bad! The particular nugget he’s holding here is part of his personal collection and was found in this area just two years ago.

We also visited the site of Marshall’s grave and an 1890 monument to him. He’s facing toward the river and the site of his discovery a half-mile away.

This was Marshall’s cabin, which is surprisingly good-sized for the time. He lived here for about a decade, ironically well after the Gold Rush. He spent his last years in poverty.

And finally, St. John’s Church, which was erected in 1858 to replace a log church on the site. The tiny town of Coloma, now considered something of a ghost town although residents in the area number just over 500, was once big enough that St. John’s was one of eight churches in town.

The girls’ favorite activity of the day was not school, nor was it exploring Coloma. Their favorite time, hands down, was 45 minutes in a freezing cold pool at the end of the day in our campground. Yes, they love to swim, but more importantly, we had unexpected company in the pool: four little frogs. Madelyn spotted one first and unexpectedly scooped it up into her hand when it swam near. Three seconds later, Erika had one too. These two girls must have caught and released and petted those frogs two dozen times, maybe more. (How I wished I’d brought my camera!) At first they tried to help the amphibians out of the pool, but those darn frogs always jumped right back in. The two girls had such a ball chasing those creatures! Victoria, on the other hand, is more dainty than her sisters and wanted nothing to do with them. Anytime her sisters got close to her with offers to let her pet a frog, she freaked out and begged me to hold her (which, of course, I did). I didn’t tell her that I understood completely. Amphibians and/or reptiles in close proximity make me wish someone would hold me too!