Cenizo Journal Spring 2019 | Page 12

TEXAS GOLD FEVER Story by Howdy-Nocona Fowler. Illustrations by Kevin Bishop. I n 1848, a man named James W. Marshall picked a gold nugget out of the South Fork of the American River by Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. Before the 1849 Gold Rush was over, 12 300,000 people had migrated to California from around the world in search of gold. This ‘49 Gold Rush was also directly responsible for the founding of not just one but two historic Cenizo Second Quarter 2019 American corporations, the Levi Strauss Company and the John B. Stetson Hat Company. In August 9, 1904, a solitary prospec- tor named Shorty Harris and his pack burros discovered what became the Bull Frog Gold Mine just outside of Beatty, Nevada, 96 miles north of Las Vegas. Shorty reached down and picked up a rock to throw at a hard-to-catch burro,