Taking Control of Property during the Gold Rush

In 1839, July 5, the governor of California Alvarado, who was Mexican, gave John Sutter permission to select a tract of land situated on the east of the San Francisco Bay to settle down in.

In order to meet the requirements for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen and was given 49,000 acres of land. He decided to settle in an area where the American and Sacramento Rivers joined. He named the grant that was given to him New Helvetia after his homeland and started building his fort. He decided to build on a hill that over looked the rivers. His small empire was eighteen feet high, the walls were three feet thick and he positioned cannons on each corner. The fort John Sutter built was comparable to a small city and it included a tannery, distillery, gristmill, blacksmith, carpentry and a blanket weaving shop. By 1844 his fort was very well established and almost completed.

The only item that Sutter did not have was lumber. There were however, a great amount of trees in the mountains to the east, so he decided to build a saw mill on the American River on a site that was called Coloma in order to obtain lumber for the fort.

James Marshall was a carpenter that worked for Sutter and Sutter put Marshall in charge of building and operating the mill and told him that if this were done they would divide the profits.

Unfortunately for John Sutter, on the 24th of January, James Marshall made the discovery that ended up shifting the history of America (continue reading, you will find out why). Marshall had directed the water from the millpond into the tailrace so that it could get washed and cleaned from the dirt it had on it.

One morning when Marshall was checking the tailrace to see if it was clean, he observed there were a lot of tiny pieces of bright yellow metal shining. Marshall picked up the shiny pieces of yellow metal and studied them for a little while. Invaded by the excitement he obviously decided to test this shiny yellow metal to see if indeed it was GOLD by pounding on it with a hard rock; when he saw the metal flattened out with no trouble, he knew it was gold.

Obviously when Marshall found out about this exciting news, he knew he had to go to Sutter’s fort with the news. It took him four days to get there though and when he finally got there he told Sutter about it.