当加利福尼亚淘金热50周年纪念日临近时，人们对寻找可能还活着的目击者产生了极大的兴趣。詹姆斯·马歇尔（James Marshall）在为冒险家兼土地男爵约翰·萨特（John Sutter）建造锯木厂时首次发现了几块金块，有几个人声称与他在一起。

大多数这些说法都受到了质疑，但人们普遍认为，一位名叫亚当·威克斯（Adam Wicks）的老人住在加利福尼亚州的文图拉，他能够可靠地讲述1848年1月24日在加利福尼亚州首次发现黄金的故事。

1897年12月27日，《纽约时报》发表了对威克斯的采访，距离50周年纪念还有一个月左右。

Wicks回忆说，1847岁的夏天，21岁的时候，他乘船抵达旧金山：

"I was charmed with the wild new country, and decided to stay, and I’ve never been out of the state from that time. Along in October 1847, I went with several young fellows up the Sacramento River to Sutter’s Fort, at what is now the City of Sacramento. There were about 25 white people at Sutter’s Fort, which was merely a stockade of timbers as a protection from assaults by Indians. "Sutter was the richest American in central California at the time, but he had no money. It was all in land, timber, horses, and cattle. He was about 45 years old, and was full of schemes for making money by selling his timber to the United States government, which had just come into possession of California. That is why he was having Marshall build the sawmill up in Columale (later known as Coloma). "I knew James Marshall, the discoverer of gold, very well. He was an ingenious, flighty sort of man, who claimed to be an expert millwright out from New Jersey."

加利福尼亚淘金热始于萨特锯木厂的发现

亚当·威克斯（Adam Wicks）记得，听说黄金发现是一个无关紧要的营地流言蜚语：

"In the latter part of January 1848, I was at work with a gang of vaqueros for Captain Sutter. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday when I first heard of the gold discovery. It was on January 26, 1848, forty-eight hours after the event. We had driven a drove of cattle to a fertile grazing spot on the American River and were on our way back to Columale for more orders. "A nephew, a lad of 15 years, of Mrs. Wimmer, the cook at the lumber camp, met us on the road. I gave him a lift on my horse, and as we jogged along the boy told me that Jim Marshall had found some pieces of what Marshall and Mrs. Wimmer thought were gold. The boy told this in the most matter-of-fact way, and I did not think of it again until I had put the horses in the corral and Marshall and I sat down for a smoke."

威克斯向马歇尔询问了谣传中的黄金发现。马歇尔一开始很恼火，因为男孩甚至提到了这件事。但在要求威克斯发誓他能保守秘密后，马歇尔走进他的小屋，拿着蜡烛和锡火柴盒回来了。他点燃蜡烛，打开火柴盒，把他说的是金块的东西拿给灯芯看。

"The largest nugget was the size of a hickory nut; the others were the size of black beans. All had been hammered, and were very bright from boiling and acid tests. Those were the evidences of gold. "I have wondered a thousand times since how we took the finding of the gold so coolly. Why, it did not seem to us a big thing. It appeared only an easier way of making a living for a few of us. We had never heard of a stampede of gold-crazy men in those days. Besides, we were green backwoodsmen. None of us had ever seen natural gold before."

萨特工厂的工人们泰然自若

令人惊讶的是，这一发现对萨特的日常生活几乎没有影响。正如威克斯回忆的那样，生活照旧进行：

"We went to bed at the usual hour that night, and so little excited were we about the discovery that neither of us lost a moment’s sleep over the stupendous wealth that lay all about us. We proposed to go out and hunt at odd times and on Sundays for gold nuggets. Two weeks or so later Mrs. Wimmer went to Sacramento. There she showed at Sutter’s Fort some nuggets she had found along the American River. Even Captain Sutter himself had not known of the finds of gold on his land until then."

黄金热很快席卷了整个国家

维默夫人那张松弛的嘴唇引发了一场大规模的人口迁移。亚当·威克斯（Adam Wicks）记得探矿者在几个月内就开始出现：

"The earliest rush to the mines was in April. There were 20 men, from San Francisco, in the party. Marshall was so mad at Mrs. Wimmer that he vowed he would never treat her decently again. "At first it was thought the gold was only to be found within a radius of a few miles of the sawmill at Columale, but the newcomers spread out, and every day brought news of localities along the American River that were richer in gold than where we had been quietly working for a few weeks. "The very maddest man of all was Captain Sutter when men began to come from San Francisco, San Jose, Monterey and Vallejo by the score to find gold. All of the captain's workmen quit their jobs, his sawmill could not be run, his cattle went wandering away for lack of vaqueros, and his ranch was occupied by a horde of lawless gold-crazy men of all degrees of civilization. All the captain’s plans for a great business career were suddenly ruined."

“黄金热”很快蔓延到东海岸，1848年底，詹姆斯·诺克斯·波尔克总统在他向国会发表的年度讲话中提到了在加利福尼亚发现黄金的事实。伟大的加利福尼亚淘金热开始了，第二年将有成千上万的“49人”前来淘金。

《纽约论坛报》传奇编辑霍勒斯·格里利派遣记者巴亚德·泰勒报道这一现象。1849夏天，泰勒来到旧金山，看到一座城市以惊人的速度增长，山坡上到处都是建筑和帐篷。几年前还被视为边远前哨的加利福尼亚州，将永远不会像现在这样。