On January 24th 1848 the California Gold Rush started.

James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma. He found a shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill he was building for John Sutter. The gold rush lasted until 1855, drawing in some 300,000 prospectors seeking the valuable metal.

In 1846 San Francisco was a settlement of a mere 200 people. By 1852, the population had soared to 36,000. Whilst the modern day equivalent of tens of billions of dollars of gold was found, very few actually became wealthy from the discovered gold.

Image: By – G.F. Nesbitt & Co., printer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:California_Clipper_500.jpg)