At that point, the bewildered, depressed Marshall seriously undermined his own future. For whatever reasons, he began to claim supernatural, mystical powers that allegedly allowed him to locate the richest gold deposits. His refusal to reveal the location of these so-called rich diggings only angered resentful miners, who even threatened to lynch him if he did not lead them to new sources of treasure. Marshall was forced to flee for his life and try to start over as just another prospector. However, his identity was so widely and well known that miners hounded him wherever he went.

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By 1853, Marshall could stomach no more. He packed a few supplies on his back and sought to hide out in the hills. A quotation from his memoirs suggests his plight at the time: ‘I was soon forced to again leave Coloma for want of food. My property was swept from me, and no one would give me employment. I have had to carry my pack of thirty or forty pounds over the mountains, living on China rice alone. If I sought employment, I was refused on the reasoning that I had discovered the goldmines, and should be the one to employ them; they did not wish the man that made the discovery under their control….Thus I wandered for more than four years.’

In time, failed mining and other business ventures deeply embittered Marshall. He believed that the world–or at least the state–owed him something for his remarkable discovery. Every financial setback he suffered he interpreted as a conscious effort by somebody to deprive him of what he considered to be his divine rights. His eccentric behavior alienated all but a few friends, leaving him a virtual recluse. This was an ironic turn of events, since at one time large numbers of miners had been willing to follow him anywhere in search of gold.

In 1872, he received some compensation for his contribution to California’s gold-crazed growth. The state Legislature awarded him a $200-per-month pension. Marshall was 62 years old at the time. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Kelsey, a few miles east of Coloma, where he used the money to open a blacksmith shop. He worked there and lived in the Union Hotel until his death on August 10, 1885. In the meantime, his state pension had been cut in half after 1874 and eliminated entirely in 1876. During his last years, Marshall, who had become an obvious alcoholic, was forced to live by handyman jobs, handouts and the sale of his autograph on special cards for 50 cents each. An attempted lecture tour failed to sustain a profit, in part because Marshall was a poor speaker.

Margaret A. Kelly, Marshall’s friend during his embittered old age, wrote that ‘probably no man ever went to his grave so misunderstood, so misjudged, so misrepresented, so altogether slandered as James W. Marshall.’ Although possibly true, it should be noted that Marshall’s self-destructive, often bizarre behavior contributed to his misfortune. Even before his famous discovery, he was known as a person who told tales about spiritual visions and claimed to have heard strange voices.

On May 3, 1890, a monument of the man whose discovery unleashed the force and fury of the California Gold Rush was officially dedicated with an elaborate program attended by thousands. The statue shows the former carpenter pointing at the spot where he allegedly found the first flakes of gold. It was financed by the Native Sons of the Golden West and an appropriation by the state legislature. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma also commemorates the gold discovery and contains artifacts and memorabilia regarding the man himself. An authentic replica of the sawmill still operates, and a few old gold rush buildings remain intact from Coloma’s glory days.

Harassed and unappreciated throughout much of his adult life, Marshall was a tragic victim of nature’s great lottery. Ironically, he has been remembered in death as one of California’s more influential–though accidental–history-makers. The original nugget he found, which has long belonged to the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley, is called the Wimmer Nugget after Peter L. Wimmer, Marshall’s assistant in supervising the Indians and others who dug the tailrace of Sutter’s Mill. Wimmer’s wife tested the metal by boiling it with homemade soap to assure that it would emerge untarnished. Despite the involvement of others in determining that Marshall indeed had discovered gold, one would think that the nugget should have been named in his honor–the oversight being just one more of the many ironic twists of fate that plagued Marshall’s troubled life.

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