The silence of the woods was broken only by the rushing of the meeting currents below and the soughing of the breeze through the foliage.

The sun was in the western sky, causing a variation of light and shadow to fall upon the landscape, which was exceedingly pleasing.

The hillsides were covered with oaks, bending their crooked branches in phantastic forms, while here and there a mighty pine towered above them, and tall willows waved their slender branches, as it were, nodding us a welcome.

-Maj. William Downie

Downieville — recently founded and still overseen by Scottish Major William Downie — is a beautiful valley at the forks of the Yuba River.  The view takes your breath away: the forested hillsides, the winding and lazy river — and the lack of fellow prospectors.

Where the American River in Coloma was packed with men panning shoulder to shoulder, the Yuba is worked by just a few dozen men.

You quickly get to work in the riverbed, panning out a handful of flakes and small nuggets your first day.  Within a few weeks, you steadily fill your poke with more and more gold, cashing in your findings in the fast-growing town of Downieville.

DOWNIEVILLE IN 1850

By the spring of 1850, word is out; more and more men crowd the river and surrounding hillside.

You parlay your earnings into some logging equipment, felling trees, building long toms to sell at exorbitant prices.

Then you turn further profits by selling cut timber as framed houses sprout up in the valley.

Colorful mining camps like Whiskey Diggins, Poverty Hill, and Poker Flat dot the hillside, but you’ve found lasting work as a businessman.

It wasn’t what you expected when you left for California, but it somehow just feels right: the clean mountain air, beautiful vistas, and an unending supply of money from emigrants of all persuasions.

In summer of 1851, things take a turn for the worse.  At night on the Fourth of July, a young man named Frederick Cannon staggers to your home, clearly intoxicated after a celebratory evening, askingfor more liquor.

You send him on his way, only to watch him do the same thing to the young Mexican girl, Juanita, who lives across the street.  He curses her and calls her a prostitute before staggering home.

The next night, your slumber is interrupted by a massive commotion in the street.  You rush out to find an angry mob, stringing Juanita to a gallows.  The girl, confronted again by Cannon, fatally stabbed the miner in the chest.  Her execution, the result of mob justice, is the first (and only) hanging of a woman during the gold rush.

You quickly grow disillusioned with California.  Before 1851 ends, you’re on a steamer back to New York, with a satchel full of money and stories to last a lifetime.

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