Following James Marshall’s discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma in 1848, California’s population leaped from 14,000 to 250,000 in only four years. Between 1850 and 1859, miners extracted 28,280,711 fine ounces of gold.
California has the largest economy in the United States and, in 1997, was the first state to reach the trillion-dollar benchmark in gross state product. In 2012, California was ranked the ninth-largest economy in the world.
California grows more than 3.3 million tons of winegrapes on over 540,000 acres each year and produces roughly 90 percent of all U.S. wine.
