Excerpt from Reminiscences of Early San Francisco 1847–48

First published in the Sacramento Daily Union in 1873

Reprinted in A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush, 1999

Edited by Joshua Paddison

It took several months for people in San Francisco—barely one hundred miles away from Sutter's Mill—to hear of Marshall's discovery of gold on January 24, 1848. As the first news of gold trickled through the small California towns, some were skeptical. In San Francisco, a town of about five hundred people, settlers were busy setting up shops to support the growing farming communities; farming was considered the best economic opportunity in the territory at the time. However, as workers from Sutter's Mill began buying goods with gold dust, the rumors of gold in the hills of...