Enroute he sees a circus parade, with an elephant at the front of the line. While the farmer was dazzled, his horses were terrified. Bolting, the horses overturn the wagon and the farmer’s produce spills across the road. Scarcely ruffled, the farmer says, “I don’t give a hang for I have seen the elephant.” (Levy xvi). Many a 49er must have returned from the California rivers and streams with empty pockets and a feeling that all they had seen was the elephant’s backside!
As a matter of fact, the two men most associated with the discovery of gold in California—James Marshall and John Sutter—died poor and bitter. In Sutter’s case, his mill workers ran off to look for gold, squatters over-ran his 50,000 acres near Sacramento and even killed many of his 13,000 cattle. As a final blow, his Mexican land grant was contested in a federal court. He died bankrupt and alcoholic in a Pennsylvania hotel room having failed, as have many men after him, to get a timely and favorable response from the U.S. Congress. “By this sudden discovery of the gold, all my great plans were destroyed,” Sutter said. “Instead of being rich, I am ruined” (Kowalewski, 52).
The new immigrants to California came not only from other states in the Union but other countries as well, like Australia, Chile, and China. For most of the 49ers as they were called, California was a long way from home—even if you started on US soil. If you were from “back East,” there was the sea route around the tip of South America, a trip of about 5 months. If you were from the central prairie there was the Oregon-California trail by foot or wagon—a shorter distance but not faster. Either way there was only so much the average family or individual could afford to haul.
All the new California residents needed housing, furniture, clothing, food, and, of course, entertainment. San Francisco, in particular, was filled with ready-made consumers. In fact, the first self-made California millionaire was not a gold miner. It was Sam Brannan, originally a Maine Yankee and later a San Francisco newspaper publisher and “chain store” owner who sold the sweating gold miners shovels, picks, whiskey, flour, and anything else he could lay his hands on. Even today there is money to be made from the old 49ers. In 2005 a rare Gold Rush-era coin (a “Quarter Eagle”), owned by a descendant of Chinese immigrants who toiled in those California gold fields, sold for $253,000 at a Beverly Hills auction! As for Sam Brannan, asked by an emissary of Brigham Young whether he intended to fulfill his duty to the Mormon church and tithe, Brannan reportedly replied:: “I’ll give up the Lord’s money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord”!
More important to our own story is the fact that many of these new San Francisco stores and homes were built with redwoods. As the ready forests around the city became depleted, some sawmill operators would look further north to fill the growing demands.
