As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at Sutter's saw-mill. Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and spread throughout the land. Everybody was talking of "Gold! gold!!!" until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our soldiers began to desert. Citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and packmules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day, and for a time it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold."

• General William Tecumseh Sherman from "Gold, First Hand Accounts from the Rush That Made the West" by John Richard Stevens