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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	COLOMA California
Location: El Dorado County. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park Colloma Valley

Ownership and Administration. State of California; Division of Beaches and Parks.

Significance. The discovery of gold in January 1848 by James Marshall in Coloma (Culluma) Valley, about 40 miles from Sutter's Fort, while he was constructing a sawmill on the south fork of the American River, decisively affected the course of U.S. history. It touched off the great gold rush to California and brought about California statehood in 1850. The town of Coloma, which grew up around the gold discovery site, was the first white settlement in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. When the local gold field was exhausted, the town began to decline and eventually disappeared. It will always be remembered, however, as the site of one of the historic milestones of westward expansion.

James Marshall statue at Coloma, California, erected by the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West. Marshall points to the site of his discovery.

Present Appearance. Today only a cluster of dilapidated buildings remains at the original townsite. In 1890 the State of California, at the instigation of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, erected a statue of James Marshall about half a mile from the sawmill site at the gold discovery site; and in 1924 the Society of California Pioneers placed an 18-foot-high stone monument at the sawmill site. In 1947 University of California archeologists, in cooperation with the National Park Service and the California State Park Commission, established the dimensions and structural details of the old sawmill and recovered several hundred artifacts. The sawmill site, including Marshall's cabin and other structures, is preserved today as a State historical monument. [5]

NHL Designation: 07/04/61