Rhoads Diggings, about one-half mile northwest of this site, was a rich alluvial placer gold deposit that Thomas Rhoads kept secret but mined with great success and historical significance. In the spring of 1846, Thomas and his wife Elizabeth, friends of Brigham Young, agreed to bring their 14 children and 12 grandchildren from Missouri to California, becoming one of the first LDS families to arrive in the Sacramento Valley; it is believed he was scouting the area for Brigham Young. After arriving in California, the Rhoads family arranged with Captain John Sutter to live on Dry Creek near the present town of Galt, where they found and mined gold months before the famous discovery at Coloma and kept their work quiet. After a visit with former Mormon Battalion members while prospecting at Mormon Island in March 1848, Thomas and his son Daniel camped on a dry hillside in this area, recognized small gold nuggets there, and according to family lore discreetly gathered gold from what became the richest of his numerous mines for about a year, a place later called Rhoads Diggings. In 1849, at Brigham Young's request, Rhoads and about 45 others left California for Utah, and he hid 60 pounds of gold in a buckskin pouch inside a barrel of flour. Later known as the Rhoads' Gold Train, he brought 100 pounds of gold with him, including the 60-pound pouch, most of it extracted from Rhoads Diggings, and this gold was used to establish the Salt Lake Mint and help sustain the struggling new Mormon settlement in Salt Lake City.