Great events were in the making when in California in 1848, gold nuggets were found in the tailrace of Sutter’s Mill. The word passed around quickly, and the first modern international gold rush was on. It put the first sizeable amounts of precious metals into the coffers of the nations of the world since the Spanish Conquistadores ransacked the treasure houses of Peru and Mexico. It brought about modern mining practices, and before the end of the century, the search for gold was so international and intense that comparable strikes had been made in South Africa, Australia, Canada and Alaska, resulting in fresh redistribution of populations, not only in the United States but also in other portions of the world. The problems accompanying such redistribution were plentiful, and they are still plaguing us to this day. But the lure that led men to our West was not gold alone. The El Dorado of man’s dreams, be it a gold vein, oil patch, store on Main Street, cattle ranch, or farm in Peaceful Valley, can very well lie in any new and unexplored lands. So it was then. Few men could afford for themselves, families and belongings the cost of passage by sailing ship, around the Horn or by portage at the Isthmus of Panama, from Boston, New York, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston or Indianola, to San Francisco. Besides that, a fellow who was bent on making a trip liked to look over the country lying between home and his proposed destination. So, many found their El Dorado, not on the Pacific Coast but along the trails between the Great River and the Pacific Ocean. The inhabitants of the crowded East and the folks of the South felt their race-old urge to get on the move towards more freedom and opportunity. Old windy Horace Greeley was soon to advise, “Go West, Young Man.” So go West they did, young and old, first by small companies on horseback or in buckboards, then later by trains of covered wagons which carried their families and all earthly possessions, grouped together for companionship as well as for protection against the Indians. Population movements in the United States have generally gone from East to West in parallel lines, once the Atlantic seaboard was settled. And so this great gold movement from East to West brought settlement of the intermediate lands between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean by the natural contrasting types of North-South peoples.