Week 3
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DAY
15 – Sunday, March 28 HIGHLIGHTS: Laura’s house, Old Sacramento But
nothing nailed the coffin shut on Sutter’s dreams more decisively
than when gold was discovered in a riverbed at his very own sawmill
in 1848. Right away it became
difficult to get a full day’s work out of the laborer’s he’d hired,
mostly local Indians and Mormon pioneers, who saw more potential
for wealth in the riverbed than in the meager wages Sutter was paying
them. (And today’s employers
think the internet is
a costly distraction). Sutter
and the other settlers were able to keep the discovery a secret
for a while. Even a newspaper article printed two months
later, declaring GOLD MINE FOUND, only attracted a few curious prospectors.
It
ended up being the Mormons who blew the cover on the whole thing
when they brought their golden tithes to a San Francisco church.
Pretty soon, Mormons, Christians and atheists alike were
running through the streets shouting, “Gold!
Gold in the American River!”
The entire city reportedly emptied within a few days as everybody
caught gold fever and swarmed en masse to Sutter’s Fort. Sutter’s
agricultural dreams died a quick death as every able-bodied worker
abandoned his wheat fields, gristmills and tannery vats in search
of gold. Squatters took
up residence in Sutter’s fields and even broke into the fort itself,
stealing livestock, tools and any other supplies that would hold
them over for another day of prospecting.
In less than six months word had spread as far as Hawaii
and Peru and the Gold Rush was officially
on. By the end of 1848 there were over five thousand
miners working the river. By
the end of 1849, there were forty
thousand, coming from as far away as Europe and China, all with
visions of quick and easy fortune.
With
creditors breathing down his neck and no crop to cash in on, Sutter
desperately looked for ways to profit off the country’s new obsession.
His intention was to establish a town, appropriately named
Sutterville, a few miles south of the junction of the two rivers,
in an area less prone to flooding. Sutter left the matter in the hands of his
capable son while he went prospecting in nearby Coloma. He returned only to discover that his son had
kowtowed to pressure from local merchants and built the town closer
to the rivers – and subsequent flood plain – than Sutter had wanted. Adding insult to injury, he’d also gone ahead
and named the town, not after his father, but after the river: Sacramento. Less
than two years later, inevitable flooding destroyed much of the
town. Soon after that, fires
destroyed it even further. Riots
broke out between squatters and Sutter’s landholders, killing several. A smallpox outbreak a year later killed hundreds
more. In just over a decade,
the city was hit by no less than four devastating floods, finally
prompting the city planners to haul in thousands of cubic yards
of dirt in order to raise the town’s elevation by twelve feet.
Not
only had Sutter’s dreams of an agricultural empire been completely
dashed by gold fever… and not only was he never able to profit off
the gold discovered on his own land… and
not only did the Supreme Court declare many of Sutter’s land holdings
to be invalid… but then a small band of men burned Sutter’s house
down in 1865, forcing him and his family to move back east, bankrupt. They settled down in a small Pennsylvania town
while Sutter continually sought financial restitution from Washington
and was repeatedly denied. Finally,
after years of hearing his petitions, Congress passed a bill in
1880 granting him $50,000 in recompense.
John Augustus Sutter died of heart failure two days later.
He
wasn’t the only one who caught the ugly end of the Gold Rush.
People from every corner of the globe were drawn by the stories
of quick and easy fortune; gold so easily and readily accessible
that one needed only a metal pan and a way to get there. Rich and poor alike picked up or sold everything
they owned and made the trip west, sometimes taking as long at five
months to get there, all with the same alluring dream in their heads:
pan gold for a few days and live comfortably for the rest of your
life. Beyond that, California was still free land
at the time, with only a bare shell of law and government in place. People saw not only the promise of wealth and
prosperity, but also the freedom to live and do with it as they
saw fit. By
the time most of them got there, the only gold left was buried deep
underground, requiring specialized (read: expensive) equipment to
retrieve it. In the end,
only a few fairly industrious corporations actually profited off
of the physical gold taken from the two rivers.
Otherwise, most of the revenue was generated by resourceful
entrepreneurs providing any number of services – honest or otherwise
– catering to the many gold seekers all along the rivers and wagon
trails leading to California. For the rest, broken dreams and empty wallets
gave way to debauchery and lawlessness, turning Sacramento into
as dangerous an old west town as any at the time. History
of course is cyclical, and exactly one hundred and fifty years later
people from all over the United States once again rushed back to
California and toward the promise of quick and easy fortune when
the dot-com boom gave everybody internet
fever. This time, instead
of pans and shovels, they came with iMac’s
and business plans. Just
as before, the landscape was free and full of possibility, with
very few laws restricting the use of cyberspace.
But yet again, it was only the few very industrious (and
very lucky) companies that actually turned a profit and survived
their first year. The rest
cashed in their broken dreams along with their stock options and
likewise gave in to debauchery to go work for Microsoft.
But
we went into Old Sac with Laura, a local, so we didn’t do any of
that touristy crap. The
four of us walked (at Laila’s pace of course) along the wooden sidewalks
and cobblestone streets on a picture perfect Sunday afternoon. I was impressed at the lengths the city had
gone to to preserve the feel of the Old West town this place had
once been, even going so far as to leave up a few of the old hitching
posts. Not
that there were any horses around in need of hitching.
Instead, there were motorcycles.
Everywhere. Old Sac is an extremely biker-friendly area
and all around us we could hear the constant rattle of Harley Davidsons as packs of bikers drove up and down the main drag.
The American Motorcyclist
Association organizes several fundraisers every year, including
a gigantic Toys
for Tots run that begins and ends in this part of town,
so it’s been in the best interest of the local businesses to remain
friendly. Most every bar and restaurant we walked by
had a sign out front proclaiming “Bikers Welcome.” The city even stepped up a few years back and designated several
“motorcycles only” parking areas close-by.
As
Laura put it, “Bikers like to be with other bikers. You don’t usually see a bar with a ‘Bikers
Welcome’ sign and only two or three bikers inside. They’re like schools of fish and everyone knows this.” As
I looked around at the hordes and hordes of leather-clad bikers
dumping plenty of money into the local economy, I realized that
this was the Old West of today, and bikers were the modern
day cowboys. They’re usually true blue-collar men, sometimes
on the fringes of society, living life their way, and earning a
wage with their own muscles and sweat.
But instead of chaps, ten-gallon hats and a faithful steed,
it’s leather jackets, helmets and a Harley
Davidson.
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