Captain John Augustus Sutter, who was born in Baden, Germany, February 15th, 1803, after many adventures in New York, Missouri, New Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, and Sitka, at last found himself in San Francisco.

From this spot he crossed the bay and went up the Sacramento River, where he built a stockade, known as Sutter's Fort, and erected a saw mill at a cost of $10,000, and a flour mill at an outlay of $25,000.

Here in 1847 he was joined by James Wilson Marshall, born in New Jersey in 1812.

Marshall was sent up to the North Fork of the American River, where at Coloma he built a saw mill.

This was near the center of El Dorado county, and in a line northeast from San Francisco.