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Description

Rare albumen photograph of a painting by Charles C. Nahl, depicting John Sutter’s Coloma sawmill as it appeared in 1851, a few years after the 1848 gold discovery.  This photograph has been attributed to Carleton Watkins.  Nahl's painting was created in 1867.

Weston Naef has suggested that Nahl may have used a very rare daguerreotype of Sutter's Mill (ca. 1851) as the basis for his painting. Watkins owned the original daguerreotype and made a mammoth plate photograph copy of it in the 1870s or 1880s.

Sutter's Mill, located near Coloma, California, was built by John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant whose full name was Johann August Sutter. Born in Kandern, Baden (now in Germany), in 1803, Sutter became a naturalized Mexican citizen before establishing his settlement, Sutter's Fort, in present-day Sacramento, California. His mill, built in partnership with James W. Marshall, was part of his effort to develop his vast landholdings in the Sacramento Valley. holds profound historical significance as the site where John Marshall discovered gold on January 24, 1848. This discovery triggered the California Gold Rush, a transformative event that spurred massive migration to California, dramatically accelerated its statehood in 1850, and reshaped the economic, social, and cultural landscape of the United States. The mill, part of John Sutter's sawmill operations, became a symbol of fortune and opportunity, forever linking California to the promise of prosperity and the allure of the American West.

Condition Description
Albumen photograph. Handwritten description on verso in a 19th-century hand: "Sutter's Mill where gold was first discovered in California."
Reference
Naef & Hult-Lewis, Carleton Watkins, the Complete Mammoth Photographs 1271 (ref. to mammoth plate version).
Carleton E. Watkins Biography

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916) was one of the most highly acclaimed of early western photographers, yet Watkins's work has never been fully cataloged. No complete listings of his "Old Series" stereoviews, published before 1875, are known.  

Watkins extensively photographed early San Francisco, Yosemite, Mendocino and the Sierra Nevada mining regions. His photogaphs of Yosemite helped influence Congress and President Lincoln in the preservation of Yosemite Valley. Watkins also made some of the earliest photographs of Southern California and the Pacific Nortwest. Watkins' Pacific Railroad series documents construction of the trans-continental railroad from Sacramento to Utah.