By Stan Lau
Whenever the question arises, “Where and when was gold discovered in California?”, the answer most people will give is — “Sutter’s Mill, 1848, Northern California.” However, the first gold discovery was made in March 1842 by Francisco Lopez, in San Francisquito Canyon, 35 miles north of Los Angeles. These mines were worked by Mexicans for several years, but the deposits were not very rich. Water was scarce in the area, and the mines were eventually abandoned.
In 1853-54 gold was found in the foothills on the Santa Anita Ranch, but these deposits were also too small and scarce, and mining activities soon stopped. In 1854 gold was discovered .in the San Gabriel River and neighboring canyons. These deposits were worked for many years and yielded a substantial amount of the precious metal. In 1863 gold mines were opened on Santa Catalina Island, with rather poor results. In 18.68 the first quartz mill in Lbs Angeles County was built in Soledad Canyon to process the ore from mines opened in that area. Since water was scarce, the deposits were worked only during t_he winter months by Chinese and natives, producing a weekly yield of several hundred dollars.
There is no question that a large amount of gold was found in Los Angeles County. It has been reported that over a period of 18 years four million dollars’ worth of gold dust was purchased from mines in this county. In one year almost forty thousand dollars’ worth of gold was sent from Los Angeles to the San Francisco mint for coining purposes.
(Information was compiled by J. Albert Wilson in 1880 for the volume “History of Los Angeles County”, published by Thompson and West.)