On February 4, 1846, 27-year-old Samuel Brannan sailed from New York City aboard the Brooklyn. On board were 238 fellow Mormons. They were bound for the Mexican territory of California, where they hoped to build a Mormon kingdom without the conflicts they had experienced in the United States. During the six months the Brooklyn was at sea, the United States went to war with Mexico. When the Mormons sailed into San Francisco Bay, they were dismayed to learn the Americans were in control.
In the fall of 1847 he opened a store at John Sutter’s Fort. A few months later, rumors circulated that gold had been found nearby at Coloma. In early May, Brannan headed to the mines to see for himself. He learned “there was more gold than all the people in California could take out in fifty years.” Brannan made plans for a second store. Then, he packed some of the precious metal into a quinine bottle and traveled the hundred miles back to San Francisco. As he stepped off the ferry, Brannan swung his hat, waved the bottle and shouted, “Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” By the middle of June, three-quarters of the male population had left town for the mines.
Brannan didn’t actually dig for gold, but gold swelled his investments to a fortune. His store made enormous profits by selling as much as $5,000 (about $120,000 in 2005 dollars) in goods per day to miners. Brannan also convinced some Mormon miners to pay him a percentage of their income in exchange for his attempts to secure title to the goldfields, which he never did. He opened a third store. He had several buildings in San Francisco and was on his way to being the largest landowner in the new town of Sacramento.