Ghost Towns & Independent Miners
As soon as the gold deposits ran out the people moved on out and this is when the Ghost Towns started to show up. Before 1850 the camps of Canyonville and Washington on Yuba River had been deserted. By the winter of 1852 Dame Shirley’s Rich Bar was deserted as well.
By 1853 the independent miners were not able to make enough by panning the gravels that were left. At this point miners had to join with other miners and build huge sluice boxed they called “Long Toms” to wash huge amounts of dirt so they could get to the gold they needed in order to survive.
The miners would get together and build Long Toms and would then shovel the dirt into the sluice boxes while other men would move the dirt over the riffles. They would then divide and share the gold they had obtained at the end of the day.
After awhile this was not an effective method anymore, as it could not support the masses of people that were in the Sierra Nevada foothills. By then big companies started to mine the veins that had fed the streams while there were people that were using huge hoses to pour water against the gravel cliffs in order to wash the gravel into the sluice boxes a mile long.
After this the 49ers went back to their homelands or got into another form of business in their new home. At the same time other people moved on to places such as Comstock Lode, Tombstone, etc. Other people tried out their luck in the desert to work the placers there, and later on some people even moved to Alaska.
James Marshall, who was the first man to actually pick a piece of gold up from the stream bed that day in Mother Lode, ended up wandering the foothills for years trying to find gold of his own but the gold avoided him for some reason. He then went back to the fort and Sutter gave him some provisions, pack animals and Indians. Marshall was considered a very odd man and after awhile the Indians no longer wanted to travel with him anymore.
The prospectors that knew who James Marshall was would often times follow him because they thought he had some secret ability to find gold and many of these men did find a great amount of gold. After the discovery in Sutter’s Mill, James Marshall was at the area near Deer Creek, close to Nevada City but he did not leave with anything. Around one year after that though, over five thousand miners were working there and they produced $378,000,000 in one hundred year’s time.
Marshall then turned into a spiritualist and told people they were going to lead him to a great fortune. He started making claims that he had special powers to locate gold, so he was frequently followed and sometimes threatened. He ended up living in Kelsey, just a few miles from Coloma, where he operated a blacksmith shop and sold his autograph on little pieces of paper to complement his income. He additionally drank in excess and often times depended on friends for support.
Marshall died lonely and bitter in 1885 at age 74; never having taken pleasure in the wealth he assisted others in finding. He is buried under his statue in the State Historic Park that bears his name. The monument was built in 1890, not far from Marshall's cabin. After Marshall’s death, Sutter said, “His spirits never led him to his fortune”.
By 1855, the gold rush had ended.