By the late summer and fall of 1849, thousands of gold seekers began to flood into California—some coming over the Sierra Nevada via the transcontinental route, others pouring in through the port of San Francisco. As Peter J. Blodgett points out in his book Land of Golden Dreams: California in the Gold Rush Decade, 1848–1858, "one estimate asserts that the number of miners had increased a remarkable eightfold in just a year to forty thousand. Only a year later, by the close of 1850, that figure rose two and a half times to the staggering total of one hundred thousand."

The high expectations of many of these immigrants would be dashed almost immediately upon their arrival in gold country. Brian Roberts quotes the positive mood of forty-niner Henry Hyde as he arrived in San Francisco: "We expect great things, for we have a good and wellorganized company...