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Weber's Creek
One claim in this area resulted in $17,000 worth of gold in a single week ($415,000 in 2005 dollars). -
Mormon Island
Mormons working for John Sutter made their own gold find a few miles up the American River. -
Murphy's
The Murphy brothers struck gold just a few days after arriving in the Sierras; by the end of the year, they had $1.5 million worth ($37 million in 2005 dollars). -
Sutter's Mill/Coloma
James Marshall kicked off the California gold rush when he spotted some pea-sized bits of gold in a mill raceway. The news brought thousands of prospectors to the area, but neither Marshall nor his employer John Sutter prospered from the find. -
Bidwell's Bar
Another employee of Sutter, John Bidwell, made his own strike further north in an area that became known as Bidwell's Bar. The land was so rich with gold that one miner later built a three-story mansion with his profits and still had enough gold left to bury $100,000 ($2.4 million in 2005 dollars) of it for safekeeping. -
Mariposa
John Fremont's property, at the southern edge of the goldfields, was immensely lucrative; his Mexican workers regularly sent him buckskin bags filled with 100 pounds of gold. -
Rich Bar
Three German miners made an immense find in the extreme northern section of the goldfields: Rich Bar would produce some $23 million of gold ($561 million in 2005 dollars). -
Comstock Lode
The discovery of silver on the other side of the Sierras in Nevada brought an end to the California gold rush; at its height, about $80 million (some $1.9 billion in 2005 dollars) had been pulled annually from the goldfields, but that figure had fallen by almost half when the Comstock Lode was discovered.