Multimedia Collection
The Speck of the Future
(The West series)
VHS
84 minutes
F591 .S6331 1996
In 1848, a sawmill worker named James Marshall reached down into the streambed of the American River in California - and came up with the future of the West in the palm of his hand. He had discovered gold. During the next year alone, in one of the most astounding human stampedes in history, more than 50,000 fortune-seekers would swarm into the Sierra Nevada in a headlong scramble for riches.
Wild mining camps with names such as Whiskey Diggings, Grizzly Flat and You Bet would spring up - and then disappear - with each new strike of riches. And a once-sleepy village on a magnificent bay would change overnight into the thriving, international city of San Francisco, where a shrewd Morman shopkeeper would become the gold rush's first millionaire. It was a rambunctious singularly American time, and it would change the West forever.
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