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James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, finds gold. -
Charles Bennett was traveling through Benicia, California when he heard talks about the discovery of coal near Mount Diablo, in turn he let it be known that gold was found along the American River. -
San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan confirms the discovery of gold. -
The New York Herald is the first newspaper to report the discovery of gold on the east coast. -
James K. Polk the current President at the time, confirms the discovery of gold to Congress. -
The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians, afterwards, sever thousand Latin Americans arrived, including people from Mexico and Peru. -
In the goldfields at the beginning, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes, attempted to balance the rights of early arrivers at a site with later arrivers; a "claim" could be "staked" by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked
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Early forty-niners were able to "pan" for gold due to a large amount of gold flakes and nuggets that were sitting at the top of the gravel in the river beds and streams. -
Large amounts of individuals are arrivals from all around the world. Estimated that approximately 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849—about half by land and half by sea. -
San Francisco had grown from a small settlement of a few hundred to around 36,00 by 1852 -
It is estimated 12 million ounces of gold were retrieved in the first five years. -
Hydraulic mining was being used now, due to all of the easily accessible gold being retrieved from the upper layers of gravel.
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By the 1880s it was estimated that an additional 11 million ounces of gold had been retrieved by hydraulic mining efforts. -
The final stage was to recover gold that has washed down the rivers into the sandbars of California's central valley. -
It is estimated an additional 20 million ounces of gold were recovered by dredging in the central valley.