California’s Route 49 winds and climbs its way through long stretches of California’s Gold Country—scene of the 1849 Gold Rush as well as years of gold mining after—and it is littered with historic spots and museums, celebrating events small and (at least to those who live there) large.
Driving quite a length of Route 49 on a recent road trip, and visiting quite a few of those spots, I realized there was a common thread to many of them, and a missing element.
The common thread, it seemed, was admiration and awe for the hardy pioneers who crossed the country or sailed around Cape Horn to try their luck there, and who led what now seem like incredibly colorful lives in incredibly colorful mining camps, often with incredibly colorful names like Angel’s Camp, Rough and Ready, Gouge Eye and more.
The missing piece, I realized, was the period before and after, and the effect the Gold Rush had on the lives of those, mainly indigenous peoples, who had been there before. And even in the stories of the white prospectors there was not much attention to women, and only a smattering of references to environmental issues.
I say all this in preface to the exception: at the Marshall Gold Discovery Center at Coloma, site of the original gold strike at what my childhood textbooks called ‘Sutter’s Mill.’ There, in a state historic park, the museum takes on the task of filling in some of the blanks, as well as some of the details of the story.
And that’s my focus, because the site’s already had two excellent visits by Gumbo bloggers PortMoresby and Jonathan L.
Although Northern California was still Spanish territory when Sutter’s manager, James Marshall spotted gold in the river below their lumber mill, it hadn’t really been colonized by Spain. The first Spanish expedition to explore the Sacramento Valley took place only in 1808. That was followed by a Hudson’s Bay Company trapping expedition that brought malaria, wiping out numbers of indigenous villages.
And then came Sutter. An ambitious young man of Swiss-German parentage, several languages and both Mexican and U.S. citizenship. In 1839, He talked the Spanish governor of California to grant him nearly 50,000 acres and complete power in the Sacramento Valley on the premise that Sutter would develop a thriving colony that would block both Russian and U.S. intervention in the area.
And then came the discovery of gold at the site along the American River. Sutter’s original plan for an agricultural and commercial empire (which incidentally depended heavily on forced labor or slavery for Indians, already illegal in Mexico) gave way to the rush.
The native peoples in the area had already been under pressure; their numbers reduced by disease, and their lives of hunting, fishing and foraging disrupted by Sutter’s colony. The Gold Rush added another heavy blow as mining operations quickly polluted streams, killed game and cut down forests. The devastation only increased as surface mining gave way to hydraulic mining, stripping away whole hillsides and dumping the remains in the rivers.
That practice didn’t stop until the silting and pollution of the rivers by the 1880s led to its end: Not because of damage to the land and way of life of the native people, but because it interfered with the growing agricultural industry further down the rivers and into the Central Valley.
Tools used by native people in the Gold Rush area, and a display of Indian and non-Indian toys and dolls that overlapped in the area.
The museum at Marshall works hard at keeping several narratives centered: the world of the indigenous people, the world of the incoming miners, the environment, and the actual less-than-legendary lives of the miners and others in the towns that grew to support the mining.
A tombstone carved into the surface of a fir tree at the scene of a murder
A lot of thought has gone into the narrative material at the museum, even starting with basic questions that must puzzle many children: Why was gold so valuable? There are also many exhibits explaining the tools of daily life and mining.
In many cases, exhibits such as this rocker frame and pan are matched with vintage photos showing how they were used.
Life in the towns is also examined in the museum, and several buildings outside continue the connection. Besides the living quarters such as the cabin below, most camps would include some stores, boarding houses and bars.
While the mining camps have a historic reputation as lawless rowdy places, there were also active attempts at order, quite important in a place where such valuable material was all around!
Outside ‘living history’ demonstrations were limited by pandemic restrictions when I visited, but offer another opportunity to understand the lives behind the legends. There are also outdoor exhibits of mining machinery, and one that reproduces a store operated by a Chinese merchant. Chinese miners and merchants were both important to the period and objects often of discrimination and violence.
After the days of ‘easy’ gold in surface streams, mining turned first to the hydraulic stripping of hillsides and then to deep mining in tunnels under the earth—and the area began to take on a longer-term agricultural character, fed in part by fevered advertisements offering cheap or free land, and calling California a ‘paradise for immigrants.’
And for those who still believe it’s out there waiting for them to find it and get rich, there’s plenty of spots along the river across the road from the museum. Grab a pan and see if you can still strike gold!
