The true forty-niners—those who arrived in California in 1849—found gold hunting a relatively easy chore. Miners simply stood in the shallows of small rivers and streams scooping up the sandy bottom with a flat pan. The water was then swirled around until the sand separated from small pebbles and bits of rock, which would collect along the edge of the pan. Gold nuggets and flakes would also separate and were simply removed from the debris.

Although the process was relatively uncomplicated, early miners who employed it sometimes extracted as much as $400 worth of gold per day. By late 1849, however, most streams and rivers had been worked so heavily that the gold was becoming harder and harder to find. The increasingly difficult chore was further complicated by the swelling number of would-be miners who were entering the state. It has been estimated...