In 2017 my wife and I drove to Idaho to see the solar eclipse, and we spent a weekend in Sacramento on the way. That Saturday we visited the state capitol building and saw what I imagine are the typical things to see; the Assembly and Senate chambers, the restored historical offices, the governors’ portraits (including the excellent portrait of Jerry Brown by Don Bachardy). Something we saw that I didn’t expect was an exhibition of items from the California State Library. And one of the artifacts they had on display was worth the trip all by itself.
The exhibits were spread among several rooms of glass cases. One of the items on display was a crude hand drawn map in colored pencil. It showed what appeared to be a river surrounded with little drawings of individual trees. It was the perspective that caught my eye – the tree tops all pointed away from the center of the page instead of toward the top. I think the intent was to suggest the topography of the land around the river. But to me it seemed as if it was a view from directly overhead, with the trees flattened as if by an explosion from the tiny structure drawn in the middle of the page.
As it happened, something historic did occur in that river, and it was more dramatic and far reaching than an explosion. The river pictured in the map was the American River near Coloma in January 1848, and the mapmaker was James Marshall. The occasion was Marshall’s discovery of gold while overseeing the construction of a sawmill for John Sutter. This event contributed to California’s rapid admission to the United States without the typical period as a territory and changed the landscape of the West (and the rest of the United States) virtually overnight.
I’ve attached a .jpg of the map that I made from the .tif on the State Library’s website here. The original is here but is over 200 MB so you might want to look at the .jpg first. I’ve also found a photo of what is believed to be the first piece of gold Marshall found, which is in the collection of the Smithsonian in Washington.
The label near another drawing (also by Marshall) read “This crude pencil drawing … delineates perhaps the most important event in California history in the discoverer’s own hand.” There’s nothing I can add to that.