forty-niner

The story of how a handful of 21st century “forty-niners” wound up searching for gold on a singed landscape studded with Joshua trees arcs back nearly 100 years, entangling an eclectic cast of characters.

They built a reputation for coffee and good fish among the newly arriving forty-niners, and in 1852 they relocated to the New World Market, then San Francisco’s central produce market, on Commercial Street.

"Like the frontiersman and the forty-niner, the traditional cowboy is a peculiarly American type, now following them into an honorable extinction," the story noted.

Several forty-niners glimpsed precious metal as they dragged themselves over the mountains.

California's famed gold rush began in the mid-19th century when gold was discovered and tens of thousands of "forty-niners" flocked to the state from around the country.