Oak of the Golden Dream: California's First Gold Discovery

Six years before the gold rush that changed the world, a California rancher named Francisco Lopez made a quieter discovery right here in Placerita Canyon. In eighteen forty-two, Lopez was out gathering wild onions when he pulled a clump from the ground and noticed gold particles clinging to the roots of the bulbs. He had just made the first authenticated gold discovery in California history.

Word spread and a small placer rush followed in the nearby San Fernando mountains, drawing prospectors from well beyond the canyon. The deposit was modest and soon played out, and the rush faded without dramatically reshaping California.

Then, in January eighteen forty-eight, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills and everything changed. History remembered that discovery. But the oak tree under which Lopez crouched with his handful of onions still stands here in Placerita Canyon, marked as a California Historical Landmark.