In 1848, the largest single gold rush in history was just getting under way in California. The e
1848 Gold Nugget
Grade Range: K-12
Resource Type(s): Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
1/22/2009
This small piece of yellow metal is believed to be the first piece of gold discovered in 1848 at Sutter's Mill in California, launching the gold rush.
John Marshall was superintending the construction of a sawmill for Col. John Sutter on the morning of January 25, 1848, on the South Fork of the American River at Coloma, California, when he saw something glittering in the water of the mill's tailrace. According to Sutter's diary, Marshall stooped down to pick it up and "found that it was a thin scale of what appeared to be pure gold." Marshall bit the metal as a test for gold.
In June of 1848, Colonel Sutter presented Marshall's first-find scale of gold to Capt. Joseph L. Folsom, U.S. Army Assistant Quartermaster at Monterey. Folsom had journeyed to Northern California to verify the gold claim for the U.S. Government.
In August of that year, as evidence of the find, this piece and other samples of California gold to Washington, D.C., for delivery to President James K. Polk and for preservation at the National Institute. Within weeks, President Polk formally declared to Congress that gold had been discovered in California.
The gold samples then traveled with U.S. Army Lt. Lucien Loeser by ship to Panama, across the isthmus by horseback, by ship to New Orleans, and overland to Washington. A letter of transmittal from Folsom that accompanied the packet lists Specimen #1 as "the first piece of gold ever discovered in this Northern part of Upper California found by J. W. Marshall at the Saw Mill of John A. Sutter."
In 1861, the National Institute and its geological specimens, including this gold and the letter, entered the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. The Marshall Nugget remains in the collections as evidence of the discovery of gold in California.
Use this Investigation Sheet to guide students through describing the object and analyzing its meaning.
National Standards
United States History Standards (Grades 5-12)
Era 4: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
2: How the industrial revolution, increasing immigration, the rapid expansion of slavery, and the westward movement changed the lives of Americans and led toward regional tensions
3: The extension, restriction, and reorganization of political democracy after 1800
4: The sources and character of cultural, religious, and social reform movements in the antebellum period
World History Standards (Grades 5-12)
Era 7: An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
2: The causes and consequences of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, 1700-1850
3: The transformation of Eurasian societies in an era of global trade and rising European power, 1750-1870
4: Patterns of nationalism, state-building, and social reform in Europe and the Americas, 1830-1914
5: Patterns of global change in the era of Western military and economic domination, 1800-1914
6: Major global trends from 1750-1914