Gold!!

History sometimes comes from mundane origins. This little inlet off the American River was the origin of an event that changed world history...the California Gold Rush. This is where James Marshall discovered gold while attempting to improve the flow of water downstream from his sawmill by clearing the channel of silt and debris. In early 1848, he found a little gold here. Word soon got out, things mushroomed, and by the next year thousands of people from all over the world flocked to California with dreams of riches. In 1847 California was a sleepy backwater, disputed between Mexico and the US during the war between those countries; three years later, it was a world famous state of the union, on its way to becoming a focal point of the Pacific Rim. Furthermore, the type of people who would make a long, arduous journey to seek gold on the frontier were of course more adventurous than your average individual, and thus California from the start had a dynamic, risk taking, free thinking, cosmopolitan population. It still does!

Though he was the first to find (or at least become famous for finding) gold in California, Marshall never got rich. He was not a very good businessman, and had a taste for the grog besides. He lived in this cabin on the hill above Coloma, the site of his discovery, for many years afterward.

Compare Marshall's cabin with the abode of a bloke who WAS a good businessman...William Carson. He wasn't into gold...he made his fortune in lumber in the late 19th century and built this mansion in Eureka.