In the 1830’s and 1840’s, Americans who moved to California took the Oregon Trail, which forked off in Idaho at the Snake River southwards. This became known as the California trail, which ran through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Before the Mexican War, mostly merchants came to California and not settlers. Besides, Mexican officials didn’t want them to settle there. However in 1839, they did give Swiss immigrant John Sutter permission to start a colony, which he called Sutter’s Fort. It became a popular rest stop for American emigrants afterwards. Anglo Californians wrote newspaper advertisements praising his settlement as well as guidebooks encouraging people to move west.

The Donner party was a group of western travelers who went to California but were stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during winter. They began their journey west in the spring of 1846 during the spring. They tried to find a shortcut, left the main trail and got lost. When they reached the mountains they were trapped by heavy snows. A rescue party found the starving and freezing group in Feb Of the 87 travelers, 42 had died.

In 1848, Sutter sent a carpenter named James Marshall to build a sawmill beside a river, and while working Marshall discovered gold. Sutter and Marshall agreed to keep it a secret, however when they arrived at the site the next day they saw that a Native American worker had also discovered gold that very morning. Sutter’s workers soon quit to search for gold. Stories spread rapidly of the discovery. President Polk added to the excitement by confirming it during his farewell message to Congress. Within the next year, in 1849, 80,000 gold seekers came to California.

The Gold seekers migrants who came to California in 1849 became known as forty- niners. Nearly 80% of the forty-niners were Americans, the rest came from all over the world. They braved long and dangerous journeys to reach California, and they often arrived in San Francisco. The port became a convenient trade center, and it’s population soared from 800 in 1848 to 25,000 by Few of them had any gold-mining experience, and the work was often hard and time consuming. They would prospect along the banks or streams in their search for gold along a 70 mile stretch of rivers in California.

The first person to arrive at a site would “stake a claim.” Early miners often banded together to prospect for gold, and agreed that each would keep a share of whatever gold was found. When once group abandoned a claim due to scarcity of gold, other groups would take over the search. Sometimes this would lead to conflict as several rushed in to take the abandoned claim… these often became violent. Mining methods varied according to the location. The most popular was placer mining, which was panning to wash nuggets out of the river. Sometimes they dug into the hills, but this was often done by companies and not individuals. In 1853 California’s yearly gold production peaked at $60 million.