46 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
Marshall discovers Gold at Coloma.—January 19, 1848, James W. Marshall,
while engaged in digging a race for a saw-mill at Coloma (thirty-live
miles east from Sutter's Fort), found some pieces of yellow metal which
he and the half-dozen men working with him at the mill supposed to be
gold. " He felt confident that he had made a discovery of great
importance, but he knew nothing of either chemistry or gold-mining, and
he could not prove the nature of the metal or tell how to obtain it in
paying quantities. ... So Marshall's collection of specimens continued
to accumulate, and his associates began to think there might be
something in his gold-mine after all." *
In
the middle of February, Bennett, one of the party employed at the mill,
went to San Francisco and returned with Isaac Humphreys, a man who had
washed gold in Georgia, and who, after a few hours' work, declared the
mines to be richer than those of his own State. By means of a rocker he
obtained daily about one ounce of gold, and soon all the hands of the
mill were rocking for the precious metal.
The
record of the discovery of gold, as related by Parsons in his biography
of Marshall, is somewhat different from that published by Browne, and
gives to Marshall alone the credit of the discovery.
Other Gold Discoveries.—Pierson
B. Redding, the owner of a large ranch at the head of the Sacramento
valley, visited the mining works at Coloma, and immediately resolved
to commence washing on his own property, which he thought was in a
similar formation, and in a few weeks he had begun mining on a bar on
Clear Creek, nearly two hundred miles northwest from Coloma. This
example was followed by John Bidwell, who, having seen Sutter's works,
commenced prospecting on the bars of the Feather River, seventy-five
miles northwest from Coloma.
* See u Reports upon the Mineral Resources of the United States," by J. Ross Browne, 1867.
