Mormon Workers Cabin

In 1946, President James K. Polk authorized the Army to enlist Mormons to fight in the Mexican War. Four hundred ninety-six men joined the Mormon Battalion in Council Bluffs, Iowa on July 16, 1846. They marched over 2,000 miles, building a wagon road from Santa Fe to the West Coast. After discharge from the Army, a group of the battalion came north by land to Sutter’s Fort. Sutter wanted a mill built in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada but had problems finding skilled labor. With the arrival of the Mormon Battalion, he contracted with 106 battalion members to build mills as well as work in the fort. Sutter sent six men from the Mormon Battalion into the foothills to an area known as Coloma to begin work on the mill on September 29, 1847. They built a cabin like this, completing it on January 23, 1848. Because of two battalion men’s journals, the actual date that gold was discovered is known as January 24, 1848.

Coloma, California · United States