Did you know that the start of the California Gold rush brought more than 250,000 people west to California? The Gold Rush was a defining time in the history of California. The outcome of the California Gold Rush was a significant compromise in the nineteenth century because it led to forming of towns as people migrated, forming of California as a state, and the Compromise of 1850. On January 24, 1848, a discovery was made that changed many Americans’ lives. January 24, 1848 James W. Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, discovered gold. Marshall was building a saw mill on the Sierra Nevada foothills when he found the gold. He was building the mill for John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant. When Marshall found the gold, he hit it between two rocks and it flattened but did not break. This is how he determined that it was real gold. He went to tell Sutter and said “I have found it, I have found gold” (Thompson 12). John Sutter, the client of James Marshall, left Switzerland to start over and became a citizen of Mexico. When Sutter left Switzerland, he abandoned his wife and four children. After living in Mexico, he moved to Mississippi to work as an innkeeper. After in Mississippi, he traveled to Hawaii. He worked hard to earn enough money and then he moved to present day California and bought a 50,000 acre ranch. He named the ranch “New Helvetia”, which is now present day Sacramento. On his ranch, Sutter raised livestock and wheat. He later hired James Marshall to