Marshall's Monument

Visitors to Marshall's Monument describe an indistinct shadow following them up the hill to the grave of James Marshall, the man who found gold at Sutter's Mill on 24 January 1848 and set off the rush that remade California. Marshall got almost nothing from it: prospectors trailed him for years in the belief that he had a gift for finding gold, his ventures failed, and he ended up running a blacksmith shop at Kelsey. The state legislature granted him a pension in 1872 and rescinded it in 1876 after complaints about his drinking. He died in 1885, aged seventy-five and destitute, and was buried on the Coloma hillside above his old cabin; the state appropriated $9,000 for a bronze monument over his grave, dedicated in May 1890, showing him pointing down at the spot where he found the gold.