Hundreds of thousands of people migrated to California pursuing gold. The first man to find Californian gold was James Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill for John Sutter on the American River. Both men agreed to keep the treasure a secret to protect their land, but newspaper and store owner Sam Brannon caught wind of the discovery. He walked up and down the streets of San Francisco with a small vial of gold telling people he had found it in the American River. By the end of 1849, less than two years after the discovery of gold, more than 80,000 people had flocked to California. In the following years, fortune hunters came to the Gold Rush State from around the world including China, Peru, England, and Australia. During the 1840’s and
