Description

One of the most important and memorable events of the United States westward push across the frontier came with the discovery of gold in the lands that became California in January 1848 Located thousands of miles away from the countrys power centers on the east coast at the time the announcement came a month before the MexicanAmerican War had ended and among the very few Americans that were near the region at the time many of them were Army soldiers who were participating in the war and garrisoned there San Francisco was still best known for being a Spanish military and missionary outpost during the colonial era and only a few hundred called it home Mexicos independence and its possession of those lands had come only a generation earlier