Partners In History

On Friday, Aug. 27, 1847, John Augustus Sutter made a contract and entered into partnership with James Wilson Marshall for a sawmill to be built on the Amer. Fork, an agreement that led to California’s astonishing gold rush. Sutter left Germany for the United States in 1834, and after several years in the Midwest reached the Sacramento Valley in 1839. A year later he received a 48,000-acre land grant from the Mexican government and began creating a small empire near the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. Needing lumber to expand his fort and a partner to help build a sawmill, he joined forces with Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, and construction began in the fall of 1847. Marshall had almost finished the sawmill when he found gold in the tailrace. Ironically, the discovery that enriched so many brought ruin to its key figures, and both Marshall and Sutter died in near-poverty.

Coloma, California · United States