"It was a clear cold morning I shall never forget," wroteJames Marshall in his diary on January 24, 1848 (as quoted in Rosalyn Schanzer's Gold Fever!). "My eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. Then I saw another piece. Putting one of the pieces on a hard river stone, I took another and commenced hammering. It was soft and didn't break; it therefore must be gold." With these words, carpenter James Marshall recorded his discovery of the mineral that would change California from a sleepy Mexican territory into the fastest-growing state in the rapidly expanding United States of America. Within six months of Marshall's discovery, word had spread that there was gold throughout the streams and...