William Rich Hutton, an itinerant land surveyor and mapmaker, produced dozens of pencil and watercolor drawings of California scenes between 1847 and 1853. This view of Sutter's mill dates from April 1849.

Although Sutter intended to keep the gold find secret, even he couldn't help sharing the news. At the end of this March 1848 letter to San Francisco merchant William Leidesdorff filled with news of his ranch and saw mill, Sutter writes: "We intend to form a company for working the Gold mines, which prove to be very rich. Would you not take a share in it? So soon as if it would not pay well, we could stop it an any time."

Read Sutter's letter.

"Upper Mines" and "Lower Mines or Mormon Diggings," in Colonel Richard B. Mason's report on gold in California to the War Department. Colonel Mason, the American military governor of California, toured the "diggings" in 1848 and noted with amazement that thousands of miners were already hard at work. His report to the War Department in Washington, D.C., included these maps of the earliest goldfields — and a tea chest filled with gold samples.