It was on the 19th day of January, 1848, that James W. Marshall, while
engaged in digging a race for a saw-mill at Coloma, about thirty-five
miles eastward from Sutter's Fort, found some pieces of yellow metal,
which he and the half-dozen men working with him at the mill supposed to
be gold. He felt confident that he had made a discovery of great
importance, but he knew nothing of either chemistry or gold-mining, so
he could not prove the nature of the metal nor tell how to obtain it in
paying quantities. Every morning he went down to the race to look for
the bits of metal; but the other men at the mill thought Marshall was
very wild in his ideas, and they continued their labors in building the
mill, and in sowing wheat and planting vegetables. The swift current of
the mill-race washed away a considerable body of earthy matter, leaving
the coarse particles of gold behind; so Marshall's collection of
specimens continued to accumulate, and his associates began to think
there might be something in his gold mines after all. About the middle
of February, a Mr. Bennett, one of the party employed at the mill, went
to San Francisco for the purpose of learning whether this metal was
precious, and there he was introduced to Isaac Humphrey, who had washed
for gold in Georgia. The experienced miner saw at a glance that he
had the true stuff before him, and, after a few inquiries, he was
satisfied that the diggings must be rich. He made immediate preparation
to visit the mill, and tried to persuade some of his friends to go with
him; but they thought it would be only a waste of time and money, so he
went with Bennett for his sole companion.
He arrived at Coloma on the 7th of March, and found the work at the
mill going on as if no gold existed in the neighborhood. The next day
he took a pan and spade, and washed some of the dirt in the bottom of
the mill-race in places where Marshall had found his specimens, and,
in a few hours, Humphrey declared that these mines were far richer
than any in Georgia. He now made a rocker and went to work washing
gold industriously, and every day yielded to him an ounce or two of
metal. The men at the mill made rockers for themselves, and all
were soon busy in search of the yellow metal. Everything else was
abandoned; the rumor of the discovery spread slowly. In the middle of
March Pearson B. Reading, the owner of a large ranch at the head of
the Sacramento valley, happened to visit Sutter's Fort, and hearing
of the mining at Coloma, he went thither to see it. He said that if
similarity of formation could be taken as a proof, there must be gold
mines near his ranch; so, after observing the method of washing, he
posted off, and in a few weeks he was at work on the bars of Clear
Creek, nearly two hundred miles northwestward from Coloma. A few
days after Reading had left, John Bidwell, now representative of the
northern district of the State in the lower House of Congress, came to
Coloma, and the result of his visit was that, in less than a month,
he had a party of Indians from his ranch washing gold on the bars of
Feather River, twenty-five miles northwestward from Coloma. Thus the
mines were opened at far distant points.
The first printed notice of the discovery of gold was given in the
California newspaper published in San Francisco on the 10th of March.
On the 29th of May the same paper, announcing that its publication
would be suspended, says: "The whole country, from San Francisco to
Los Angeles, and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada,
resound the sordid cry of _gold! gold! gold!_ while the field is left
half planted, the house half built and everything neglected but the
manufacture of pick and shovels, and the means of transportation to
the spot where one man obtained one hundred and twenty-eight dollars'
worth of the real stuff in one day's washing; and the average for all
concerned, is twenty dollars per diem. The first to commence quartz
mining in California were Capt. Win. Jackson and Mr. Eliason, both
Virginians, and the first machine used was a Chilian mill.
The Reid Mine, in North Carolina, was the first gold mine discovered
and worked in the United States, and the only one in North America
from which, up to 1825, gold was sent to the Mint.