Layla Zulfa The Gilded Catalyst: How a Sierra Nevada Nugget Reforged the American Soul
Introduction On a cold Monday morning in January 1848, a carpenter and sawmill operator named James W. Marshall noticed a glint of yellow in the tailrace of the mill he was constructing for John Sutter. That solitary flake of gold, discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, was the pebble that started an avalanche. […]
