San Francisco was the gateway to the gold country. In the early months of the Gold Rush, the city's population expanded so rapidly that builders could not keep pace with the demand for shelter. Noted one Forty-Niner, "Stores, Groceries, Eatinghouses, & gambling shops are generally nothing more than temporary tents... I said that San Francisco was a miniature world & it may be called so for every national that has any knowledge of the Gold Mines is represented here."

Accessible by shallow-draft vessels sailing up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay, Sacramento became the marketplace for the mining country, with goods of every description flowing through its port. Life in Sacramento was rough and tumble: "The door of many a gambling-hell on the levee, and in J and K Streets, standing invitingly open," observed a visitor. "The wail of torture from innumerable musical instruments peals from all quarters through the fog and darkness."

This German edition of an 1849 bird's-eye view of Sacramento shows the worldwide fascination with all things Californian.

San Francisco was desperately short of space as its astounding growth continued. It filled in portions of its waterfront to create more dry land. In doing so, it incorporated some of the abandoned ships that littered the harbor into the expanding business districts, as seen in this Frank Marryat lithograph.

Beyond gold country