Original subtitles

In 1848, a chance discovery would lay the foundation for the American Empire.

No!

Over the next three years, nearly 300,000 people would head west in a hunt for over

$25 billion of buried treasure.

Whoo-hoo!

For some, it was the American dream, but for others, it became a nightmare.

This is California.

There's no right or wrong.

If you want something, you take it.

This

is the story of the California Gold Rush.

By August of 1850, greed had transformed the California Gold Rush into an all-out

war, where thousands of 49ers desperately fought each other for gold.

But just two and a half years earlier, no one had ever even heard of California.

It had been just over 70 years since the country was founded, and the American

experiment was on the verge of financial collapse.

The United States has been in essentially a depression for a dozen years.

There's no real good way, no matter how hard you work in the United States,

to get ahead.

Almost the entire population of 20 million people lived on the East Coast,

while the West was a vast, empty wilderness.

And at the furthest point away sat California.

Not even yet a state, California was home to barely 1,800 Americans.

Back then, only a select few were brave enough or stupid enough to make the trek

west.

James Marshall was an ordinary guy who came to California to start a new life and

found work building a small sawmill on the American River.

He wasn't looking to get rich, but sometimes the moments that forever

changed the world are nothing more than accidents.

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall became the first man to find gold in California.

Over the next few weeks, Marshall and his men continued to find gold, and they kept

it quiet so they could have it all for themselves.

But then Marshall made a huge mistake.

You still owe me for the tools.

How'd you get that?

Can you keep a secret?

Sam Brannon was a 29-year-old shopkeeper, and he had just learned something that

would change his life.

But he didn't immediately run into the fields to see if he could find gold.

Instead, he came up with something more masterful, and he bet every penny he had

on it.

Brannon bought every shovel, every pan, every mining tool around, and made sure no

other store for a thousand miles had any left.

And then he started the second part of his plan.

Sam Brannon was something of an enigmatic character.

He was probably an opportunist as much as he was anything else.

Found in the American River!

Brannon's got bottles full of gold, and he takes those bottles and he waves

them in the air, yelling, Gold!

Gold!

Gold from the American River!

Gold!

Gold!

Gold!

Gold!

Gold!

Brannon knew he had a monopoly on supplies.

He just needed the word to spread far enough so people would come to California

and have to buy those supplies from him.

News of gold in California took the country by storm.

Read all about it!

Headlines splashed across the front pages of newspapers from California all the way

to New York City, instantly grabbing the attention of a poor and desperate nation.

People are hearing these stories from California of people picking up in a

morning more money than they'd make in a year, and that starts this explosion,

a frenzy that spreads across the entire United States that is known everywhere as

Gold Field.

Within weeks, thousands of prospectors dropped everything and crammed onto trains

and riverboats.

Gold has this mystical power on man.

They view gold as their way out, their way to escape their mundane living.

They just take off, they leave family, they leave their security, and they go

chase the gold.

They rode as far west as they could possibly go, but no matter where they came

from, they all ended up in the same place.

Independence, Missouri.

The start of the California Trail and the end of civilization.

At various times in American history, you could say this is where the West

begins.

But in 1849, it began specifically at the Missouri River and at places like

Independence where there were folks who could sell you sort of the last thing you

need.

Even today in the West, you'll see signs, last gas for 117 miles.

Well, this was basically the same thing.

Last provisions for 1,200 miles.

Tens of thousands of gold prospectors arrived in Independence, prepared to make

the journey into the great unknown.

Among them was Charles Robinson, a 31-year-old doctor from Springfield,

Massachusetts, who gave up his practice to go find riches.

Little did he know that one day, he would become one of the most important

people in the California Gold Rush.

But at that point, he was just like everyone else.

A prospective miner looking for a group of 49ers to join up with.

When you ventured out West, you didn't go alone.

Instead, miners traveled in companies to protect against the violence of the trail.

Overland companies are organized as joint stock companies.

And that means everybody pitches in a certain amount of money, and they all

agree to share the profits.

And they're all going to help each other in this enormous undertaking of going

2,000 miles across the plains and mountains and deserts.

Robinson had his eye on a company out of Boston, having gotten word that they'd

sunk their money into a high-tech gold-washing machine, one that promised to

give them an edge in the gold fields.

Careful!

Careful!

That's worth more than the pair of you!

You got room for one more?

That's $300.

I'm a doctor.

Follow me.

Doctors were probably the most valued individuals, you know, by profession,

on the trail west.

If you had somebody who had set a broken limb before, that was really helpful.

Guns went off by accident and on purpose, and people had gunshot wounds.

A doctor could be enormously important.

For those of you who don't know who I am, I am Captain Weber.

I am the commanding officer of this company.

The journey to the gold fields is not for the weak or fate-hearted.

We will be traveling through untamed lands where scorching desert, wild animals,

and Indian savages lie in wait.

Not all of you will come back alive, but those who do will be rich men.

Man up!

49ers that were embarking on the journey to California, this was a grand adventure.

They looked at this as their big opportunity, and you could see there was

this sense that they were part of a bigger movement.

That was very much a part of the beginning of the journey.

It is dangerous because so many times they go after the gold not knowing the process

by which to get the gold.

There's so much risk.

It's unbelievable the lengths and the hardships that men will endure to find

gold.

Starvation, disease, even death are all that separated these men from riches

unlike any they'd ever seen.

Many wouldn't make it back alive, but it was a risk they were willing to

take.

The California Gold Rush was transforming America as hundreds of thousands of

hopeful 49ers set out for the West Coast.

Some of those people traveled by ship.

An 8,000 mile journey around the southern tip of South America that cost the modern

equivalent of $32,000.

Anyone who couldn't afford a ticket went overland in a six month trek across the

continent.

It was the start of the largest mass migration the country had ever seen.

The journey to California was dangerous and long and so going alone was a certain

death sentence.

Instead, prospective miners traveled in small companies like the California Mutual

Protection Association a group of 40 men from Massachusetts that was better known

as Boston Company.

As we know from the company's manifest Boston Company was built like every other

outfit on the trail organized around a number of key positions.

Each company had a doctor.

For Boston Company, that was Charles Robinson someone who could keep the men

alive and well on the trail and out in the gold fields.

Every company had a hired gun.

For Boston Company, that was William Walker a man who had been a mercenary in

several wars.

Most companies had a gold expert.

For Boston Company, it was Sylvester Edgerly a jeweler who understood the

properties of gold and knew how to find it.

And then there was the most important position of all the company leader.

For the most part, these were men who'd already been out west and knew the lay of

the land.

Men like John Webber a former major in the Massachusetts State Militia who had fought

in the Mexican-American War just years earlier.

If you had somebody with military experience that was always reassuring if

only because they knew how to hold themselves and to command.

But the vast majority of the people in the company were just wide-eyed young men

looking for an easy way to get rich.

California gave them this opportunity to go off on an adventure.

They know there's no guarantee that they're going to make it but these are

folks who are willing to take a chance.

Having a well-organized company offered protection along the only established

overland route to the west coast.

The California Trail a path that cut through some of the most dangerous

territory in the western hemisphere.

Animal attacks harsh elements a deadly disease killed an estimated 20,000

travelers before they ever reached California or roughly one death for every

500 feet on the trail.

Nobody really understood what the west was going to be like.

The west was as alien to travelers as the surface of Mars would be to us.

The best thing a company could do was keep moving.

Not just for safety but because miners were already starting to show up in

California.

Thousands of miles to the west of Boston Company a massive transformation was

underway.

While the overlanders were still stuck on the trail tens of thousands of miners

traveling by sea were descending on the small port of San Francisco which was

quickly becoming a boomtown.

And it was all thanks to the vision of one man.

In the months since he had single-handedly sparked the California Gold Rush Sam

Brannon had watched the pieces of his master plan finally fall into place as the

population of San Francisco exploded by over 1200% in just under a year.

San Francisco was the city that gold built.

Within just months it became a city of 15,000, then 20,000, then 50,000 people.

It's probably the instance of the fastest urban growth in American history.

Sam Brannon's store was the only one of its kind in California.

Every fortune seeker stopped to stock up on supplies before heading out into the

gold fields.

For the man who started the gold rush business was booming.

Hold on sir, hold on sir, hang on.

Brannon had even found a way to stave off any potential competition.

He'd row out to incoming ships, find out what they had on board make him

an offer for the cargo if he knew it was going to be worth a lot and buy it.

He was a complete opportunist.

Before long, Brannon's store was bringing in the modern equivalent of $2 million a

month.

He was able to sell things at tremendous profits.

Things that cost 25 cents in New York City would now cost $10 at Brannon's store.

Sam Brannon was the first millionaire west of the Mississippi in American history.

There were thousands of miners who were still nowhere close to California.

Back in the plains, Boston Company was still on the early leg of the California

Trail which ran alongside the Platte River a broad and fast-moving waterway that cut

300 miles across the future state of Nebraska.

But the trail didn't just run next to the river.

At times, you had to cross it.

What the hell?

Why'd we stop, Walker?

It's a holdup, Captain.

We have to wait for the ferry crossing.

The only way to get across the river was by ferry.

Companies were forced to shell out the modern equivalent of $6,000 for a ride on

a makeshift barge.

But there were only a handful of ferries with thousands of wagons.

And Boston Company was now stuck in a line over 10 miles long a traffic jam that

could take weeks to clear.

It suggests we find another route.

No, we stick to the trail.

There were a lot of groups that would disagree about the routes they were

supposed to take.

They would disagree whether they were going to head north or south and that's

where it's difficult to travel in a company.

Adding fuel to the fire, the men were forced to come face to face with a new

reality.

The first prospectors were returning east, bringing with them hundreds of thousands

of dollars worth of gold.

That, my friend, will be us in six months.

We're all going to be rich men.

This ain't the only route into California.

I say we find another.

I told you, Walker, we stick to the trail.

Let's put it to the vote.

All those in favor of finding a quicker way to the gold fields, raise your hand.

The decision to go off the California Trail was a huge risk.

It could get the company to the gold fields faster, but it also sent them right

into the heart of the most dangerous territory in the west.

The gold rush was pulling America west faster than anyone could have ever

imagined.

Most of the hopeful 49ers traveled along the well-established California Trail,

but then there were some who were daring enough to set off on their own.

Among them was the Boston Company.

Now hundreds of miles from their fellow prospectors, the company was trekking deep

into the heart of Indian territory.

The Indians were never a real threat on the trail because here was this mass of

people heading out to the west, and as long as they kept going,

the Indians really didn't bother.

But off the trail, overland companies were isolated and vulnerable.

Easy targets for the tribes who called these lands home.

Why don't they attack?

I don't know.

The greatest fear over the overland immigrants was Indian attack, and anytime

they saw Indians off in the distance, Comanches, Cheyennes, what have you,

that was a great moment of terror.

Bloody scalpings, midnight massacres, every traveler had heard the stories.

As Boston Company member William Walker recorded in his journal in an entry marked

June 5, 1849, a rumor came up today that an Ohio company was attacked by the

Indians behind us and several killed.

As morning broke, the extent of the raid came to light.

Three men were dead, and the survivors picked through what little the Indians

left behind.

More than half their food supply was gone, and they were left with only two wagons.

We only take what we need, provisions, supplies on the wagon.

Come on, let's move it.

We gotta get moving.

The only good news was that Boston Company still had their gold washer, and that gave

the men just enough hope to get them going again.

But the last leg of their journey was also the most dangerous,

because between there and the gold fields, lied the mighty Sierra Nevadas.

You've come 1,850 miles, you've tested yourself to the ultimate limit,

and now you have to cross the toughest mountain range in the United States.

40,000 square miles of impenetrable wall-to-wall mountains shooting over two

miles straight up, the highest peaks in the continental United States.

Many had died trying to cross.

Just two years earlier, 87 settlers heading to California were trapped in

these same mountains during the brutal winter of 1847, the infamous Donner Party.

Nearly half the group either froze or starved to death, and many of the

survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism.

Now, desperate to avoid the same fate, Boston Company and thousands of other

49ers had to find new ways to navigate the hazardous terrain.

The peaks are made of granite, and they're virtually straight up and

down.

You essentially have to haul your wagon up over a granite escarpment.

Very dangerous trek.

For six long weeks, Boston Company carried their wagons through the treacherous

mountain passes.

After this incredible ordeal, you finally are on the other side of the Sierra,

and you come up on a rise, and you're in the golden land.

Eight months and 18 days after leaving civilization, Boston Company had finally

made it to California.

It was such a long journey.

It was such a long process to get to the actual mining part.

And there's the doubts.

Will I really find gold?

Will I be a failure?

Will I have to come back home and go back to my old job?

You still don't know for sure, until you dig it up, if there's gold in

the ground.

They'd already been through hell, but that was nothing compared to what they

were about to encounter in the gold fields.

By late summer of 1849, the gold rush had caused the population of California to

skyrocket from 1,800 to nearly 75,000 settlers in just a year.

Among the new arrivals was Boston Company.

After eight grueling months and over 3,000 miles, the company now found themselves in

a whole new world.

They'd paid their dues on the trail,

and now it was time to get rich.

But by the time Boston Company arrived, the gold fields were already packed with

prospectors, as nearly all of those tens of thousands of new people were crammed

into the same 13 miles around the American River.

You have to be a person with a high-risk tolerance to go into gold mining.

I think you could probably do better in the stock market than you can gold mining,

because once you do your due diligence, all of the good gold claims, all of the

easy gold has been found.

Boston Company was forced to stake their claim in the heart of the crowded gold

fields, which were now as densely populated as a large East Coast city.

But the men were feeling confident.

They still had their secret weapon, one that promised to give them an edge

over everybody else.

Company B, let's unload this washer!

It cost them a fortune, and they'd spent months hauling it across the country,

guarding it against surprise attacks, risking life and limb.

And now it was all about to pay off.

Wilt awaits.

Wilt awaits!

Boston Company believed that they had a new way that they could get more gold,

and that they would be able to get rich quicker, because they had this technology

with them.

As the gold washer started working, it looked like Boston Company was on the

verge of striking it rich.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Sam Brannon was operating on a whole new level.

In the time it took Boston Company to cross the continent, Brannon had built an

empire.

The once struggling shopkeeper was now the king of California.

Last week, two ounces of gold bought four pickaxes, and this week, it only buys two.

It's not that the price of the pickaxe has gone up.

It's that there's gold everywhere, so the value of gold has gone down.

The people who were making the money were mining the miners, and nobody was mining

the miners like Sam Brannon.

Brannon's store was the only one of its kind in California, which meant he could

charge whatever he wanted.

A pound of beef cost the modern equivalent of $500, $700 for a pair of boots,

$2,600 for a blanket.

Costs were so high, it was cheaper to send your dirty laundry to be cleaned in Hawaii

and then shipped back than it was to have it washed in one of Brannon's

establishments.

For Brannon, it was the perfect scheme.

With no other options, every company in the gold fields had no choice but to go

along with it, and Boston Company was no exception.

After months on the trail, they needed to stock up on food and supplies.

It's $25.

Charles Robinson had seen men like Sam Brannon before, someone willing to take

advantage of others for his own personal gain.

But what Robinson had no way of knowing was that in less than two years,

he and Brannon would be locked in an epic battle for control of the gold fields,

one that would shape California and redefine America forever.

During the gold rush, some methods for finding gold were based on science.

Others were not.

There were miners who covered themselves in oil to see what they could pick up,

and others who wasted their money buying bogus gadgets.

And then there were the fortune tellers, or as we call them, con men.

It's safe to say that none of these methods panned out.

By September of 1849, the gold rush was less than a year old, and already the

modern equivalent of over $5 billion worth of gold had been pulled out of the ground.

But as thousands of new 49ers descended on California every day, the gold was getting

harder to come by, and competition was heating up.

There was a sense that we are all in this together, and we should help each other

out.

That changed as it became more and more difficult to make money.

With all the competition, Boston Company knew they needed an edge, and they were

certain they had it.

With the gold washer.

Just as soon as the gold rush started, the top engineers back east began

developing new devices that promised to process dirt up to 10 times faster than a

miner could with a pan.

But no matter how new the technology, the technique was based on the same age

old principle.

Gold is heavier than dirt.

Shake a bucket of gravel and water around long enough, and eventually the gold will

sink to the bottom.

The washer just accelerated the process.

Or at least, that was the idea.

With the cost of living in California so high, miners had to dig up an ounce of

gold a day just to break even.

But after weeks with the gold washer, Boston Company still hadn't found any

gold.

I say when it goes.

Sorry, Walker.

The company was starting to wonder if the machine they had carried over 3,000 miles

to California, which men gave their lives to protect, wasn't quite the secret weapon

they had hoped for.

Keep it turning.

I'm trying.

Put some muscle in it.

It's stuck.

Doc, check the auger.

Keep it moving.

There's no guarantee of anything in mining.

You can spend too much money on equipment, and if you're not knowing what you're

doing, you're just wasting your money, and you're not getting any gold.

You're just turning wheels.

Hold that.

Check the tray.

These mining contraptions that were brought to California, people realized

that these things don't do any good.

None of them really worked, but people were gullible.

It was becoming clear that the engineers who designed the machine back east didn't

know a thing about gold mining.

When you toil and sweat and have the ups and downs and you go through it with a

group of guys, it can either separate and fracture, and you can become enemies,

or you can become what we call a band of brothers.

You just never know.

What's wrong?

It needs a new cog wheel.

Where can you get one of those from?

Boston.

That ain't gonna happen.

You're just gonna have to fix it yourself.

Walker, you can help him.

You do it.

What did you say?

You do it.

High in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, along the American River,

Boston Company had reached a breaking point.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

The company's hired gun.

William Walker had had enough.

I want my money back.

Whatever money's left belongs to the company.

Gold creates a new kind of exciting, but also dangerous society at the same

time.

And that's what they discovered when they came here.

It wasn't like what they had been promised.

It was much harder, much more dangerous.

Walker took matters into his own hands.

He grabbed the company's meager supply of gold and set off on his own.

When a man is desperate, he'll go outside the law.

Well, there is no law in these camps.

Even the camps that I've seen in the modern-day gold rushes, there is no law.

Money's gone.

Anyone else wants to leave?

There's the trip.

Steal any of our animals and provisions, and you'll be flogged.

The company was falling apart, and Captain John Weber's leadership was

being put to the test.

While Boston Company struggled in the gold fields, 90 miles west, other luckier 49ers

were living the high life.

In just 18 months, gold had turned the small town of San Francisco into the

largest city west of the Mississippi.

A wild outpost where anything goes.

There's this slogan, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

That really applied to California in the early days of the gold rush, because most

people run vacation from the people who knew them.

What they did in California probably wouldn't get back to wherever they were

going back to.

But the man who ruled it all was a shopkeeper who used his monopoly over

mining supplies to seize control of the city, Sam Brannon.

While Brannon's store had made him the richest man in the west, he wasn't about

to stop there.

Brannon has pretty good business instincts and he branches out and he starts a whole

variety of different enterprises.

Brannon began taking over every business in San Francisco and anyone who didn't

give him a cut was quickly run out of town.

Sam Brannon was establishing himself as the first kingpin in California.

And with no laws to stop him, nothing stood in his way.

A lot of people were afraid of Sam Brannon.

They'd seen him exercise his power.

They'd seen him be absolutely ruthless at times.

You see that one?

That's very nice.

Thank you.

Brannon ruled by fear in many ways.

Just 130 miles northeast of San Francisco, the landscape changed quickly.

From the rolling fog of the bay to the dry, blistering heat of the rocky hills.

Hundreds of 49ers left the overcrowded goldfields to look for untouched land.

But the man who ruled it all miles away from the nearest river, among them was

William Walker.

Since abandoning Boston Company, Walker had found himself in a much more

hostile climate where temperatures spiked to 115 degrees in the scorching sun.

Also braving these harsh conditions were the only two members of Boston Company to

come with him, Oliver Martin and John Fowler.

And together, they were trying their luck at a new method for finding gold.

Dry mining.

Miners tossed dry earth into the air.

As the wind blew away the lighter pieces, only the heavier material, like gold,

was left behind.

I've done a little bit of dry mining over the years.

I didn't really like it.

The contents of the material has to be so dry in order to get a good recovery that

you're working in a dust storm.

It just covers you.

It's just miserable.

Walker documented his experience in his journals.

We were unsuccessful again today, getting but a few grains of gold.

After weeks of backbreaking work, Walker, Martin and Fowler had little to

show for it.

Beaten down and exhausted, they were no better off than they'd been before.

It spreads like wildfire.

When you do find a strike of gold before you know it, you'll have five or six guys

coming here and wanting to prospect or wanting to do something.

Gold can bring out the very worst in people.

There were instances of people jumping claims.

When you stayed to claim, you would get your 15 square foot area that this was

yours, and you had the right to whatever gold was discovered there.

But you had to enforce it yourself.

Otherwise, somebody would probably try to steal it from you.

Claim jumping still happens.

There's no doubt about it.

You haven't eaten for 10 days and you're struggling just to survive, you're going

to take desperate action.

And sometimes it ends up being survival of the fittest, and it can be ugly.

Gold has the power to turn decent men and women into psychopaths.

People infected with gold fever simply become absolutely ruthless.

After months of coming up empty, William Walker had finally discovered his

own method.

For finding gold.

By the fall of 1849, Sam Brannon was the most powerful man in San Francisco.

He already had a stake in everything from hotels to saloons.

And now, he was taking in an income of nearly four million dollars a month in

today's money.

But a new business was moving into town.

And Brannon saw an opportunity to add to his empire.

During the first year of the gold rush, 95% of the people who came were men.

And that 5% of the population that was female, was almost all prostitutes.

And there was a great demand.

Prostitutes could make a lot of money.

I'm willing to lease you one of my hotels, but I want a cut of 50%.

So do we have a deal?

Prostitution quickly became the biggest money maker in San Francisco.

Brannon began importing women from around the world.

In just months, over 2,000 prostitutes arrived.

And each woman could command the modern equivalent of $100,000 a week.

Brannon already owned the waterfront.

Now, he turned it into the biggest red light district in the world.

And a well-oiled money maker.

The girls brought the men directly from the bordellos to the gambling halls,

where they were easy targets for Brannon's casinos.

Sam Brannon was raising the bar.

It wasn't enough to own the house.

He was making sure the game was fixed.

In the gambling halls, the decks were always stacked.

You know, the house wins.

And Sam Brannon comes in on that because the fortunes that were really made,

the lasting fortunes, are made by those people who got control by whatever means

necessary.

Meanwhile, back in the gold fields, desperation was taking over.

Their gold washer was a bust.

So now, Boston Company was forced to dig for gold just like everyone else with a

pan.

And after three weeks of back-breaking work, they still hadn't found anything.

One of the things that made the gold rush happen was that any idiot could mine gold.

In California, there was so much of luck, good or bad, in determining who made it

and who didn't.

It's a business.

It's not a fairy tale out there.

Some people think they can go out and pick it out of the ground.

Well, that's just not how it works.

If you're a gold miner, you're going to hit ups and downs.

And many times, the downs are really, really big.

I experienced some very difficult times.

I doubted myself.

I had fears of failure.

There was one time when I walked out on a piece of ground and I looked around and I

go, what in the hell am I doing here?

I have no idea how to do this.

With every passing day, the company sank deeper into debt.

And with supplies running out, they needed a game changer.

As the gold became harder to find, people began to try to figure out other

ways of getting gold.

The tools became more sophisticated.

What is that?

It's a sluice.

How much earth could you turn over?

A thousand buckets a day.

The principle of the sluice box was essentially the principle of the wash pan,

except it was sort of ramping up the operation.

It was a simple but ingenious concept.

A series of boxes lined with wooden strips were locked together.

The boxes were filled with dirt and as river water rushed over it, lighter

particles washed away and the strips caught the heavier gold.

With the sluice box, a miner could process 16 times as much dirt as he could with a

pan.

It was a major leap forward in gold mining technique as companies all over the gold

field stopped panning and started building massive sluices.

After weeks of back-breaking work, carried out in sweltering heat,

Boston Company's sluice box was finally complete.

The sluice box is still our main way of getting gold, even now, just like they did

150 years ago.

It hasn't improved that much.

Pretty incredible.

Boston Company was sure they'd found their ticket to fortune.

Just as their luck seemed to be turning,

something deadly hit the gold fields.

By late October of 1849, the gold rush was just over a year old and already,

over 76 tons of gold had been pulled from California, more than double the amount of

gold that had ever been discovered on North American soil.

All that gold was traveling back east, injecting billions of dollars of new

wealth into the American economy.

But for the tens of thousands of miners in California who were trying to dig it up,

life wasn't getting any better.

In fact, it was about to get a whole lot worse as a new menace was sweeping through

the crowded gold fields,

one that threatened to destroy everything.

I'm dying, ain't I?

Cholera.

At the time, it was one of the deadliest diseases on the planet.

In just 50 years, the disease had made its way from Asia to Europe and now to the

United States, spreading across the continent faster and further than any

epidemic before it.

Within the past year alone, Cholera had killed the President of the United States,

James K.

Polton, and his successor, Zachary Taylor.

By the end of the pandemic, over 12 million people would be dead.

In the 1840s, no one knew what caused the disease or how to cure it.

The one thing they did know was that Cholera seemed to be most prevalent in

crowded areas where there was little or no sanitation, like cities or the gold

fields.

These mining camps that were bunched really close together very often were

visited by Cholera and other infectious diseases.

You'll get 10,000, 15,000 people in this small valley.

You had all of the problems of urban life without any of the urban infrastructure.

Folks in California had no time to dig wells or to dig latrines, so the local

stream became both simultaneously.

For these cramped and filthy conditions, it took just days for the disease to take

over the Boston company camp.

Cholera strikes fast, attacking your intestines, and causing severe dehydration

that could quickly lead to organ failure and death.

It was a horrendous disease.

You're vomiting, you have diarrhea, you can't control, you become dehydrated.

It was a horrible way to die.

There wasn't much a doctor could do except ease the suffering.

Most doctors believed you wanted to try to counter the symptoms, which were

free-flowing of both ends.

One of the ideas was give them opium to stop them up, and alcohol to make them

feel better.

A lot of these treatments kill more people than they cure, but some physicians

recognize that the body's losing a lot of water and you better get it back in.

If it hadn't been for cholera, Dr. Charles Robinson wouldn't have come to

California in the first place.

Two years earlier, the disease had attacked his family.

He frantically tried to find a cure,

but in the end,

he was forced to bury his daughter and his wife.

California was supposed to be a fresh start, but now, he was reliving the

nightmare.

This time, Charles Robinson was determined to find a cure.

After weeks of hiding out on the hills, William Walker, John Fowler, and Oliver

Martin had arrived in San Francisco.

It had been months since they'd last set foot in a major city, and these guys knew

exactly what they wanted.

We're going to lock it here, boys.

Under today to the hill Danny to watch the scene below the creek and the creaking old

mill Danny used to long, long ago The creaky old mill is now still Danny used to

long, long ago

People were coming in from the foothills with their pile of gold.

They wanted to blow off some steam.

Let's have a good time.

You know, I'm a king.

I've made it.

The cholera epidemic that had hit the gold fields showed no signs of letting up.

One out of every three miners contracted the disease.

One out of every 12 died of it.

Neither Dr. Charles Robinson nor anyone else in the world could stop the epidemic.

While isolated in the middle of nowhere Robinson knew he couldn't cure the disease

but he could try to treat its symptoms using whatever he found around him.

As Robinson carefully documented to relieve painful muscle spasms he tried

camphor from the bark of an evergreen tree and in isolation he tried herbs made up of

ground-up capsicum and finally to dull the pain he added a little opium.

By focusing on the symptoms Robinson hoped to keep the patient alive long enough for

their body to fight off the disease.

Incredibly it worked.

Word quickly spread and miners traveled from miles away to be saved by the doctor

in Boston Company.

To have a bona fide doctor with you was just a tremendous resource and a

tremendous advantage.

Dr. Robinson was a man that people seemed to respect and he was able to gain the

confidence of people too.

After years of torment Charles Robinson had finally beaten cholera.

And in the process he made a name for himself in the gold fields.

The cholera crisis had been averted but many of the men who'd contracted the

disease had had enough.

Miners by the hundreds gave up their dream of finding gold and headed home.

Among them Captain John Weber who after months of watching his control over his

men crumble finally realized he was no longer the true leader of Boston Company.

I want to wish you all the best of luck.

I hope at least some of you come back rich men.

When Weber makes the decision and probably after being sick like that he decides to

turn back I think that knowing who Charles Robinson was and also the fact that he had

just helped them through an illness that he would have been a natural for the group

to turn to as a leader.

What do we do now doc?

William Walker may have felt like the king of the gold fields but he didn't realize

that he was just like everyone else.

An easy mark who had played right into Sam Brannon's game.

Just you and me.

If you bet the rest of your gold I'll double your stake.

If you win you'll be a very rich man.

I think we should go.

Shut up, Fowler.

Dammit, this thing's fixed.

I want my money back.

During the California gold rush the greatest threat to the 49ers wasn't the

harsh conditions it was each other.

It was a violent and a dangerous culture in which you could lose your life very,

very easily.

And one of the sad things is when these men who had wives and families back home

they might suddenly just stop writing and their families would never know In the

gold fields nine out of every ten prospectors were armed and on average

there was a murder every five hours making California the deadliest place in America.

William Walker had cheated and robbed to get ahead in the gold fields but now he

was the one being conned by Sam Brannon.

You'll pay for this!

I'll get you good if I make it!

But Walker had finally realized the game was rigged and he was going to take

matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile it had been over two months since they survived the cholera epidemic

and Boston Company was back at work with their sluice but they were having no

better luck than they were while panning.

It was clear the problem wasn't with the technology but the land.

Some people make a mistake about digging and digging and digging thinking well

that's the only claim they've got and they'll work themselves to death on a

claim that's got nothing on it it's just no pay dear.

Four ounces.

You really don't know you've got a bad claim until you're into it too far.

A poor miner which is usually the case tries to overcome the losses that he's

already encountered on a bad piece of ground and they never make it up.

A smart miner walks away and cuts his losses.

Let's pack up and go to San Francisco and see what happens.

It's Christmas it's about time we celebrate something.

Charles Robinson decided it was time they abandoned their claim.

He knew his men needed a break.

So Boston Company set out to San Francisco

and it seemed like everyone in California had the same idea.

By the end of 1849 as Christmas approached 75,000 miners from all over California

flooded into the city.

It was the biggest party San Francisco had ever seen as miners backed into Brandon's

bars and bordellos looking for an escape.

But across town one man was looking for revenge.

With Sam Brandon preoccupied Walker broke into his mansion

to take back what was his.

Hey I found him.

There's a big fire outside.

What are you doing?

Who are you?

What's the combination to the safe?

Walker, there's a fire.

We should go.

Tell me.

Please, Scott.

Please.

Shut up.

We need to go now.

Tell me.

I don't know.

Walker, we are going to burn alive.

It started in a gambling hall downtown.

But in no time it began to be known as the great fire of 1849 that spread across San

Francisco destroying everything in its path.

By the time Robinson and Boston Company arrived the city that Gold built had

burned to the ground.