Schliemann, a German-born merchant had been living in St. Petersburg, Russia. He planned to make sure his brother was properly buried, claim what he believed to be a sizable estate, and get back to Europe.

What he found, however, was that his brother had been buried without a tombstone, and his brother's business partner had made off with the loot. So Schliemann paid $50 for a marble headstone, and set himself up in business as a gold broker. In addition to making up outrageous stories in his diary, Schliemann was more than a little paranoid.

Afraid of fire, his office was located in Sacramento's only brick-and-stone building, at Front and J streets. He wrote that he often slept on top of the gold, with pistols across his chest.

Despite two bouts of yellow fever, Schliemann persevered, and in nine months he made more than $400,000, some of it legitimately. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1852, using his Gold Rush fortune to make an even greater fortune in the Crimean War. And his money allowed Schliemann to indulge his real passion in archaeology -- and preserve himself a place in history.

In 1871, Schliemann, using Homer's "Iliad" as a guide, began digging in what is now Turkey, and found the lost city of Troy. A German merchant with a penchant for prevarication spurred the growth of modern archaeology and found the gold of an ancient era -- using the gold of California.