Three months before the story would reach the majority of the population of the U.S., Sam Brannan announced his discovery the old-fashioned way. He yelled it. “Gold! Gold!” he went about San Francisco, proclaiming, “Gold from American River!” Brennan did not even need to do any prospecting himself to strike it rich: as one of the few miner-supply stores in the area, he earned $36,000 in profit (the equivalent of $750,000 today) selling picks and shovels to the thousands-strong influx of gold-seekers.

On this day, August 19, in 1848 the New York Herald newspaper became the first major eastern newspaper to break the discovery gold in California. In this, the paper even scooped outgoing President James K. Polk, who waited to December to make formal announcement of the gold strike.

The rush of men to the area spawned new markets for just about everything. The digging and panning was arduous, almost literally backbreaking work, and those that had the means often exploited Indians to do the work. By the end of the year, placer miners were earning $20 a day for their labor. By start of 1849 the Herald reported the gold rush “set the public mind almost on the highway to insanity”, and it would get a lot insaner as the overland travelers from Missouri, steamship travelers who had to sail around the Horn of Africa, and immigrants from China flowed into San Francisco.