Replica of the saw mill at Sutter's Fort on the South Fork of the American River at what is today Coloma, California. It was near here, in January 1848, that James W. Marshall, a mill worker from Pennsylvania, made the first discovery of gold that triggered the 1849 Gold Rush.

The discovery of gold made Sutter's Fort, later Coloma, a boom town almost overnight, with the first volley of gold miners coming from California Territory and the Hawaiian Islands. By 1849, miners, gamblers, and all the other elements of a gold boom town were taking steamships from cities along the East Coast to the Isthmus of Panama, finding their way through the jungles, across to the west side at Panama City, where they caught another steamship to San Francisco and ulimately found their way to the gold fields.