Gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma on the American River, about 50 miles northeast of Sutter’s Fort, in January 1848. Four days later James Marshall showed it to John Sutter. Gold-seekers poured in, and Sutter’s land was overrun by squatters.
Sacramento’s location just downstream from the Mother Lode in the Sierra Nevada proved irresistible, and the new city grew to about 10,000 people in the early 1850s despite floods, fire and a cholera epidemic that killed 1,000 residents in 1850.
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