ABSTRACT
In January, 1848, workers began gathering flakes of gold near a sawmill they were building for John Sutter on the American River in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Though news of these finds leaked out slowly at first, by May the story was spreading rapidly throughout California, along the Pacific Coast, and throughout the Pacific Rim. By the end of the year the news had reached the Atlantic states of New York, Massachusetts, and South Carolina, as well as the European nations of Great Britain, France, and Germany. By the spring of 1849, the great California gold rush was in full swing. For much of the next decade, the lure of gold brought thousands of would-be miners from around the world to California.
