Saturday Scenes

The first gold of the California Gold Rush was found at Sutter’s Mill on January 24th, 1848. Sutter wanted to keep it a secret as he’d just established his agricultural settlement, New Helvetia, and feared that a mass search for gold would ruin his plans for an empire.

It was an impossible secret to keep. The rumors began to spread and then confirmed by Samuel Brannan, clearly a more focused business man. Instead of worrying about his livestock, Brannan quickly bought up every shovel he could find in the area and then set up a store at Sutter’s Fort to sell gold prospecting supplies. Then, he spread the word all over San Francisco by carrying a vial of gold around the streets, shouting “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” The word was out.

California Gold Rush on Wikipedia

On December 5, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the “forty-niners,” invaded the Gold Country of California or “Mother Lode.” As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters invaded his land and stole his crops and cattle.

The result? Sutter was ruined and Brannan’s store at Sutter’s Fort sold $150,000 worth of goods in 1849. That is about four million US dollars in today’s value.

Just think what he could have done if he had a Twitter account!

Meanwhile, our Saturday Scenes from December 5th are pure gold (without a trace of grit):

Make sure to pop by the Twitter streams of everyone who took a photograph so we could see a scene from their Saturday:

• rOcKeTmAn_76
• pixelfreund
• raumsinn
• NevilleFenn
• carocat
• elibrody
• JanetIsserlis
• RAFairman
• ElshaHawk
• SarahFenn
• SitheFire
• PCurd
• drewbenn
• tradingnothing
• starcade
• akaSylvia
• Lannagirl

Every person who submits a Saturday Scene gets added to the Saturday Scenes list, so you can watch that page and see what people are doing the rest of the week!

Would you like to join in? Simply take a photograph on a Saturday and tweet it to SatScenes with the location.