The Age of Gold Read Free

find whole forests of pine (which gave way to fir at still higher elevations); in the foothills he could discover stands of pines mixed with oaks, madrones, and other trees.
    Marshall knew not to go farther upstream than necessary, for accessibility by wagon had to be combined with reasonable proximity to Sutter’s Fort. Each mile from the fort was a mile the lumber would have to be hauled. Needless to say, it was cheaper to haul cut lumber than raw logs, as the bark and other wastage was a dead loss. But hauling even the finished product—by wagon, pulled by oxen—was expensive.
    It was Marshall’s job to discover a site that balanced availability of wood and water with accessibility and proximity. He found a likely spot about forty miles upstream from the fort, in a valley the local Indians called Coloma. The American River entered the valley from a defile at the southeast; it exited through a gap at the northwest. The ridge above the east bank separated this branch of the American River—the south fork—from the middle fork beyond. Access to the valley was from the south, via an Indian trail that crossed a pass leading west to the fort.
    The bottom of the valley was essentially flat, with sandy soil covered by grass, low shrubs, and some late-spring flowers. The sides of the valley were dissected by ravines that ran full in rainy weather but soon drained dry. Oaks were scattered about the lower slopes, with madrones and cypresses interspersed. Higher up the ridges, pines predominated.
    The gradient—that is, steepness—of the riverbed in the valley was such that the stream tripped along at a brisk pace. Though less than fifty yards wide in most spots, it made an insistent sound that unobtrusively filled the valley. In some wider places it was shallow enough for men and horses to wade across. Elsewhere it ran deeper and slower, but more powerfully.
    A peculiarity of the riverbed in this valley made it especially appealing to Marshall. While the river ran generally from southeast to northwest across the valley, about midway it made a bend of nearly ninety degrees to the left, over a distance of several hundred yards. At the head of the bend was one of the shallow stretches, and in the middle of this shallow stretch was a low gravel island, which bisected the stream. Along the bend, the left bank consisted of a low line of gravel. Marshall had seen enough of the work of rivers to realize that they tended to exaggerate their curvature over time, as the faster flow along the outside of a bend ate away the outer bank and deposited the scourings in the calmer water along the inner shore, until some catastrophic flood breached the neck of the bend and straightened the stream overnight.
    Marshall decided to anticipate nature, to create his own catastrophe. He would breach the line of gravel on the left bank of the river and allow the stream, or a substantial portion of it, to flow straight from the head of the bend to the foot. By shortening the horizontal distance traversed by the water, this diversion would increase the gradient of the stream and hence the velocity of the water: from a man’s swift walk to a run. More to the point, it would increase the applicable force of the current, from that which in normal, nonflood times carried sand and other light particles gently along the stream bottom, to a force that would drive the waterwheel that would power the reciprocating saw blade that would tear the pine trees into boards. Marshall envisioned a dam at the head of the bend, which would compel the river to seek a new outlet, the millrace. Nature had done part of the damming work by depositing the gravel island, but much remained.
    There was nothing elaborate or complicated about this. It required only digging and lifting: moving dirt and gravel and rocks from where Marshall didn’t want them (the millrace) to where he did (the dam). Unskilled labor would certainly suffice.
    M ARSHALL REPORTED BACK to Sutter, described