Following a frosty January night in Coloma, in the Sierra Nevada, a lumber mill foreman noticed shining specks among the thinly iced pebbles lining the channel below the water wheel. It was 1848, and the soon-to-be state of California had just months before been returned to American hands after Mexican and a brief period of independent rule. Supervising the mill for Sacramento lumber pioneer John Sutter, James Marshall made a discovery that sparked the legendary California Gold Rush and changed the course of the West’s history.
But neither Sutter nor Marshall became the Gold Rush’s first millionaire. In one of the boldest examples of American entrepreneurialism, Sam Brannan made a fortune by thinking outside the box: He profited from the gold hunters, rather than the gold itself. One of the first to learn about the lucky find, Brannan, who owned a couple of general stores as well as the newspaper in the young city of San Francisco, purchased every pot, pan and shovel in the city before he spread the news that May by running through the streets, screaming, “Gold! Gold in the American River!” (or so the legend goes).
