When one thinks of the American West, or The Wild West, visions of cowboys, Indians, cattle drives, outlaws, and sheriffs float through the mind. For many years, the West was looked upon fondly as the final frontier of America. It was an era of bigger-than-life characters who left in their wake events that lies, legends and myths are made of. These legends, lies, and myths were made much larger and grander by the Hollywood Dream Machine.
The “Wild West” almost didn’t happen. When America acquired the western half of the country after the Mexican-American War, the government couldn’t give the land away. No one really wanted to move west. With the discovery of gold in California, everyone wanted to move west to California. Hundreds of towns sprang up almost overnight and many disappeared just as quickly. One hundred and seventy-six years have passed so what has become of the old western towns and the people? Some towns are now nothing more than a name on a map. The town may have existed as a tent city or a clapboard town. The gold, silver, or copper ran out and everyone left. The tents were struck, the clapboard buildings were dismantled, and all that is left is the name on the map and an empty patch of land.
Other towns were built of more substantial materials, and we have either ruins or ghost towns preserved in a state of arrested decay. The town of Bodie on the California-Nevada border is a prime example of a ghost town in arrested decay. The gold ran out and everyone walked away. The stores still have inventory you can see. Homes were abandoned and the furniture was left behind. The State of California now has it as a state park.
There are towns that survived by morphing into historic sites with high-end stores now occupying some of the old, original buildings. Truckee and Angels Camp in California and Virginia City in Nevada are such towns. And then there are the towns that morphed into big cities with little or none of the original structures left. San Francisco can be excused because of the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed much of the original city. Los Angeles and San Diego are towns with little of the original towns left.
So, let us have a look at some of these places.
Coloma – Where it all Began
California has State Route 49, a highway that runs through the Gold Country. Aptly numbered this highway goes through all the big towns of the Gold Rush Era, including Angels Camp, Jamestown, and Columbia. So, why not start where it all began? Coloma, where it all began, is on Highway 49 between Auburn and Placerville.
A Swiss immigrant by the name of John Sutter came to the Sacramento Valley in 1841 armed with a 48,000-acre land grant from the Mexican government. In 1847 he commissioned James Marshall to build a sawmill on what is now called the American River. Work proceeded and all seemed well. A small diversion trench was built to bring water to the water wheel. Then on January 24, 1848, while inspecting the work on the mill, James saw a glint of metal at the bottom of the wheel race. He climbs into the race for a closer inspection and finds gold flakes. He immediately takes this to his boss, John Sutter, and after his inspection, it is found to be gold. The men decide to keep the find a secret but the news leaks out. On that site the town of Coloma was founded and by the next year the population swelled to 10,000 people.
Today the site is a California State Park. There are a replica of the mill and other Gold Rush era exhibits and memorabilia to be seen.
This is a glimpse of where it all began. We can now venture out to the rest of the West. From here miners had only two ways to go: east toward the Mississippi River or North to Alaska.