What is ultimately consequential about the gold rush is that people came. A few got rich, many more went home broke and ashamed, but a significant number stayed and made a life in what had become in 1850 the State of California. They populated the cities; they grazed cattle and horses; they sowed the fertile soil. With the sea links already established from the gold rush, they formed international trading enterprises to exploit California's many other untapped natural resources.

Though the gold rush faded, the people who remained retained the hyperindividualism and entrepreneurial spirit that still characterizes American culture over 150 years after that glistening nugget caught James Marshall's eye.