The Yuba-Feather Historical Museum in Forbestown is definitely worth a visit. They are only open between June and September and only on weekends so get there before they close on Labor Day. Not much remains of the original Forbestown which once had a population of 3,000 hearty souls except a cemetery and a Masonic Lodge. The new Forbestown, elevation 3,000, is located on the border between Butte County and Yuba County, about 60 miles north of Sacramento in the heart of gold country.

There is much to learn about the history of the California gold rush at the Forbestown Museum. The real story about the world famous John Sutter is a good place to start.

Most people around here know that the discovery of gold occurred at Sutter's creek, near Sutter's Mill in what is now Sutter County. Less well known is the rise and fall of the community surrounding Sutter Fort, 25 miles as the crow flies to the southeast, in what is now Yuba City. Sutter Fort sits at the low elevations, 80' above sea level, near the shortest mountain range in the world called the Sutter Buttes. The fort was named after its founder, John Sutter, a businessman and adventurer who also owned the sawmill up in the mountains near the settlement of Coloma.

Now, most people, including myself, would think that John Sutter must have become fabulously wealthy during the gold rush. Most people would be wrong. John Sutter may be the only entrepreneur who ever lost a fortune as a result of the discovery of gold on his property. Read on...

John Sutter was born in the German alps in an area that is now part of Switzerland. His birth name was Johann August Suter. The last name was changed to Sutter when Johann fled Germany in the 1830's. Suter fancied himself an aristocrat, descended from knights and nobles who could trace their origins back hundreds of years. But his shady business dealings got him in trouble with the persnickety Swiss and he disappeared into the night after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Rather than make good on a mountain of debt, or worse, face debtors prison, Suter fled the country leaving his wife and four children behind. He would not see them again for sixteen years.

Suter arrived in America in 1834, promptly changed his name, just in case, and headed west to seek his fame and fortune among the gullible travelers heading to Oregon and California. Somehow, John Sutter ended up on a ship bound for Hawaii, a bit of an overshoot, where he stayed for a while. Then he got detoured to Alaska. Only later, in July of 1939, did he end up in California at a time when it was still controlled by Spain.

Sutter represented himself to the local Viceroy (something like a county supervisor) as European gentry and persuaded the Spanish governor to give him rights to a large tract of land in the Yuba territory. The agreement was that Mr. Sutter would use his influence to attract vast numbers of immigrants from the German highlands who would compete with the English and Russians vying for control of northern California - known then as Alta California. With more Germans and Swiss settling in the Yuba territory, the Spanish reasoned, there would be a buffer zone between the Spanish to the south and the imperialistic forces of the ever expanding United States of America to the north and east.

So it was that in 1839, the Spanish granted exclusive rights to John Sutter to colonize that part of Alta California which stretched from Napa Valley all the way to the Sierra Mountains - an enormous tract of land. This was the beginning of Sutter's new found wealth and empire. Within a few years, Sutter built a fort along the Sacramento River, named it Sutter's Fort, and provisioned it with soldiers and weapons supplied by the Spanish. Large farms sprang up in this part of Alta California, irrigated by spring runoff and these were parceled out by Sutter to the continuous streams of pioneers arriving by covered wagon. Sutter Fort became the center of a no-conflict zone, something like an oasis surrounded by Americano and Californio skirmishes to the north and to the south. It was patterned after the Swiss model of diplomacy and neutrality, of which he was still fond. Indeed, Sutter named his territory "New Helvetia". Helvetia is the name that the Romans gave to the Swiss region west of the Alps.

It was no coincidence that Sutter spent more time in the mountains than he did at his fort, which he left in the administration of missionaries, since that part of California reminded him most of his native Alps. He understood the necessity of establishing a timber industry for the growing needs of the lowland communities and the Sierra foothills contained an endless supply of fine and exotic woods. His second fortune, after leasing farmland, was generated from the sawmills which he built close to the timber stands along the creeks which fed the rivulets which fed the Sacramento River which led to Sutter Fort. By 1848, Sutter had dozens of engineers and hundreds of enslaved Indians (but that's another story) working for him on a design for an elevated aquaduct which would transport logs from the upper elevations in the Sierras to Sutter Fort and from there down the Sacramento River to the Spanish fleet harbored in San Francisco Bay. For relativity, the mission city of San Francisco had fewer than 5,000 inhabitants at a time when over 50,000 people occupied the land around Sutter Fort. In many respects, John Sutter was the most powerful man in Alta California in the late 1840's; certainly the wealthiest but also possessing his own military, he cowered over all of the local politicians. John Sutter, in January 1848, was grand master over all he surveyed .

But there were problems brewing in Sutter's little piece of paradise. Sutter's management style left a lot to be desired. He ordered numerous supplies from smaller entrepreneurs for which he often failed to pay or forestalled payment until they went out of business. He bought whatever he wanted and paid whatever he felt like. Which made him a credit risk to the savier businessmen newly arriving from the East Coast. Flooding along the Sacramento River wiped out farmers and their crops which reduced his lease revenues. The Maidu Indians who had occupied the land for a thousand years either fled their homeland, died from disease or were killed by the harsh treatment of the white settlers. This left Sutter with a limited source of cheap (as in free) labor. In February of 1848, Mexico and the United States signed a treaty which ended the Spanish-American War and all of the California territories, including Alta California, were ceded to the U.S. of A. This put into question the legality of Sutter's land holdings across New Helvetia.

In spite of all this, Sutter might have managed to increase his empire, if not garner control of the new California Territory, had it not been for one fateful event which occurred just days before the signing of the Spanish-American treaty. On January 24th, 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills.

Now, if you are like me, you probably think that gold was discovered in 1849, hence the historic Highway 49 which connects all of northern California and the famous San Francisco 49ers. But, no, it was 1848 when gold was discovered near John Sutter's sawmill situated in the mountain community of Coloma along Sutter Creek. The official gold rush began in earnest a year later.

For the fabulously wealthy Mister Sutter, this was the beginning of disaster.

It isn't clear where John Sutter was when gold was discovered on his property; he spent most of his time in the mountains, after all, but he may have been at his Fort, meeting with lawyers and representatives of the new American territorial government, to determine how best to maintain control of his vast holdings of land. At any rate, it did not take long for word to reach him of the discovery.

Later events would establish that Coloma was the center of the mother lode. But Sutter's first impulse was to keep the discovery a secret. Certainly he wanted the gold for himself. But he also wanted to prevent others from trampling through his land on their way to the mountains. Unable to stop gold fever, Sutter himself tried to establish the first mining operation in the summer of 1848. But when he arrived with his engineers and his Indian laborers he was already too late. His competitors had been granted mineral rights by the new U.S. government, a formality which he neglected to complete, so he was restricted to mining on his own property. In addition, new laws prohibited using slaves in California and Sutter was taken to task for using unpaid Indians. To avoid delays caused by legal hassles over labor laws, Sutter gave the Maidu and Kanakas Indians their freedom and began his mining operation with a handful of former Spanish soldiers near his sawmill in a favorable spot. But after a few months of rock crushing, he gave up the business of hard labor. He and his men returned to his fort and he never mined another ounce of gold.

1849 saw the collapse of the Sutter fortune. Almost everyone who had ever been employed by John Sutter headed for the hills. Partly to make their own fortune and partly to make clear their unhappiness with their former boss and master. The unofficial motto of the gold diggers in 1849 was "Eureka" which is the American Indian word for "Take This Job and Shove It."

Within months, if not weeks, John Sutter had no businesses, no creditors, lots of farmland but no one to farm, and still no agreement with the American government over compensation for his land. In 1850, the newly formed State of California granted John Sutter several thousand dollars along with a pension for his losses. Sutter used the money to bring his wife and family to the United States. They lived for a short while in California, near Sutter Creek, but soon moved out of State when their magnificent house was destroyed by arson. It wasn't until after his departure that Sutter Creek became the supply center for all of the surrounding mining towns, creating millionaires out of solid middle class Americans.

In less than three years, between January of 1848 and January of 1851, John Sutter had gone from overlord to outcast.

Arriving in Pennsylvania in 1851, the Sutter family settled in a little town called Lititz, named after a city in Switzerland and home to numerous Swiss immigrants. John Sutter lived there until the end of his days, surrounded by the people he admired most - German speaking Swiss. Two days after he passed away in 1865, congress drafted a resolution granting him $50,000 in compensation for the loss of his land to squatters in California. It never passed.

And now you know the rest of the story. John Sutter, the man who is most well known among the original 49er's, the man who could have become governor and possibly even president, had not gold been discovered on his property, squandered everything for lack of good management skills.

[Look for an expanded version of this true life tale in a forthcoming book, or at least on my new wesite: badmanagement.com ]