Golis: How the Gold Rush defined what California would become

COLOMA

What's often called the largest mass migration in U.S. history began because of what happened here on Jan. 24, 1848. What happened, of course, was that a man named James Marshall discovered gold in a tailrace along the south fork of the American River.

The late Kevin Starr, who wrote nine books of California history, would later explain: “James Wilson Marshall had truly found it - found gold! - and California would never be the same.”

The state's other great historian, Carey McWilliams, would add: “In California, the lights went on all at once, in a blaze, and they have never been dimmed.”

A visit to the Mother Lode reminds us that the Gold Rush was a defining moment for California in ways that transcend the rush of men - mostly men - eager to get rich.

Here's Starr in “California, A History”: “In just about every way possible - its internationalism, its psychology of expectation, its artistic and literary culture, its racism, its heedless damage to the environment, its rapid creation of a political, economic and technological infrastructure - the Gold Rush established, for better or for worse, the founding patterns, the DNA code, of American California.“

If you think immigration is new to California, for example, consider this: In January of 1848, there were fewer than 10,000 people who weren't Native Americans living in California. That is, fewer than 10,000 people came from somewhere else. Six years later, there were more than 300,000 newcomers.

Companies of men came from all over the world - from China, Japan, Australia, Chile, Peru, Mexico, England, Ireland, France, Italy, Serbia and Germany. They came, too, from the United States, which had only recently begun the process of annexing California.

Dutch Flat was founded by Germans. San Andreas and Sonora were founded by miners from Mexico. Chinese Camp was settled by, well, miners from China. You get the idea.

In Jackson, you can visit St. Sava Serbian Church and the Serbian Orthodox Cemetery, where one headstone identifies the Soso family plot. The late Mitchell Soso, Santa Rosa's superintendent of schools for many years, grew up here. There's also a Serbian church, built by the descendants of Serbian miners, in Angels Camp.

The Gold Rush also played a role in the development of Sonoma County. In “Santa Rosa, A Nineteenth Century Town,” co-authors Gaye LeBaron, Dee Blackman, Joann Mitchell and Harvey Hansen explain: “For many, the riches they sought in California were found in the fertile valley lands that yielded, by Eastern standards, prodigious crops in a climate that seemed to make irrigation unnecessary. … By the middle of the 1850s, the Santa Rosa Valley was supplying food to a San Francisco market that would barely meet the growing demand of the population explosion.”

Unsuccessful prospectors came to earn passage home, only to discover there was money to be made in farming these fertile valleys.

The official transfer of California from Mexico to the U.S. occurred nine days after the discovery of gold (though before the news spread). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago - concluding the Mexican-American War and ceding all or parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada to the U.S. - was signed on Feb. 2, 1848.

Only two years later, California with all its riches was welcomed as the 31st state in the union. Arizona would wait another 62 years.

If you don't recognize the name of the town, Coloma, you missed fourth-grade California history. This is a name known to many Californians, even if they've never seen the place.

You get there by driving south from Auburn (or north from Placerville) on state Highway 49. It makes for a lovely drive on a sunny day. California has never been greener, and after a long, wet winter, people seemed eager to be out and about.

In Auburn, you can see the historic Placer County Courthouse, which now includes a museum. When the courthouse was declared unsafe, a volunteer told us, the community raised the money needed to preserve the building. (Hello, Santa Rosa.)

Towns between Grass Valley, Nevada City and Downieville on the north and Sonora and Chinese Camp on the south continue to celebrate their Gold Country history. Tourism is a big deal here.

On this day, visitors were tramping about the sprawling area that is the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Across the river, two guys were panning for gold, sharing both a sense of history and a sense of optimism.

At the edge of the river, an aging stone monument marks the spot where Marshall found gold while inspecting the saw mill he was building for the early California land baron John Sutter.

In one of history's ironies, both Marshall and Sutter would die broke.

While these Mother Lode counties celebrate the romance of the Gold Rush, less attention is paid to the cruelty of that time.

The life of the 49ers could be back-breaking and dangerous, or Starr's words, “nasty, brutish and short.” Plagued by high rates of homicide, plus cholera and other illnesses, 1 in 12 died.

And these improvised communities could be capable of great brutality.

Miners from China and South America were subject to persecution and other efforts to deny them access to the gold fields.

Mexicans could be the targets of lynchings. While defenders argued that lynch laws were necessary to keep order, Starr recounts, “the large number of Hispanic victims argues that something else was at work as well.”

“Many of California's lynchings of Mexicans took place during the Gold Rush from 1848 to 1855, when Anglos chafed at having to compete with Mexicans for mining claims,” the New York Times reported recently. “Never mind that California was part of Mexico just a few years earlier.”

Historians also recount how native people were decimated by disease, enslavement and vigilante killings. According to Starr, the Native American population declined from 150,000 in 1845 to 30,000 in 1870.

Proud Californians believe there is no other place that can match the state's diversity of landscapes and people. We only need to remember that history can be complicated. Sometimes, we celebrate our history, and sometimes, we are left to wish our ancestors had turned away from their worst impulses.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

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