The first speck of gold was spotted in the American River near Coloma, California, on the morning of January 24, 1848, by James Wilson Marshall who was building a water powered sawmill for John Sutter at the time. Wilson noticed several bits of yellow mineral near the unfinished mill. “ It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.“, ( www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849 ), Sutter stated when he spotted the gold. Marshall was a carpenter and a handyman, so to test if the gold was “ fool’s gold “, which shatters when struck by something hard, he “ tried it between two rocks and found that it could be beaten into a different shape but not broken “ (www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3270). He showed it to the men he was working with and said that by God, he believed he found a gold mine. Although Marshall’s discovery was what started the Gold Rush Era, it wasn’t what ignited the spark in the Gold Rush
The first speck of gold was spotted in the American River near Coloma, California, on the morning of January 24, 1848, by James Wilson Marshall who was building a water powered sawmill for John Sutter at the time. Wilson noticed several bits of yellow mineral near the unfinished mill. “ It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.“, ( www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849 ), Sutter stated when he spotted the gold. Marshall was a carpenter and a handyman, so to test if the gold was “ fool’s gold “, which shatters when struck by something hard, he “ tried it between two rocks and found that it could be beaten into a different shape but not broken “ (www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3270). He showed it to the men he was working with and said that by God, he believed he found a gold mine. Although Marshall’s discovery was what started the Gold Rush Era, it wasn’t what ignited the spark in the Gold Rush