Gold changed the destiny of a nation.

Its accident discovery in 1848 by a moody, not-too-bright carpenter set off the most frenzied gold rush in the history of the world, and the greatest mass migration of human beings ever known. It turned California — until then a sparsely populated, largely unknown region — into a household word throughout the world.

Before 1848, California was a sleepy, languid land. The Mexicans (and their predecessors, the Spanish) settled the coastal lands on vast tracts donated to them by the Mexican government, and turned it into a delightful playground. No one worked hard; the men practiced horsemanship, the women embroidered. The boring chores of life were relegated to servants.

InlandCalifornia, even wilder, was the domain of Indians… and later the domicile of a few settlers who had been granted estates by the Mexican government. Captain John Sutter was the most notable.

As 1846 opened, the United States had just wrested the charming, lonely land from Mexico after a brief skirmish or two, mainly because there was too much of it for the Mexicans to hang onto

For that matter, there was no assurance the United States would fare better controlling such a faraway settlement. California was then, in truth, a remote island, cut off from the civilized world of the East by 1,800 miles of broiling desert and impassable mountains. By sea, it was 18,000 miles distant, via Camp Horn.

Phyllis Zauner and Lon Zauner Zaner, California Gold Rush: The Story of the Rush to Riches, Publications copyright 1980 (p. 1)