Rodney Earle Bland lends an air of authenticity to the scene at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Janet Fullwood photograph

COLOMA -- Matt Sugarman, superintendent of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, keeps on his desk the autobiography of a man who led an expedition of miners to Coloma in 1848, soon after the discovery of gold. They called themselves the Oregon Boys, and they amused themselves by killing Indians.

"They were slaughtered. It was genocide. They were hunted on Sundays. They were killed for sport," Sugarman says of the American Indians who lived around Coloma, giving his desktop an angry slap for emphasis.

The story -- like the park itself -- is a reminder that the Gold Rush was not all picks, shovels, stagecoaches and hard drinkin' on weekends down at Madame Molly's Last Chance Saloon. The most defining period in California's history had an evil side that is as much a part of the historic pageant as the fortunes that were won and lost, the cities that were founded and the landscapes that were rearranged in the greedy quest for gold.

"Prejudice raised its ugly head in the Gold Rush many times. The story of these guys is not always one we like to tell, but it's the truth," says the keeper of the place where the California dream began.

Park volunteers Joe Bilotta, Erhardt Fritz and Rodney Bland don period costumes to demonstrate gold panning at the very spot where James Marshall, on Jan. 24, 1848, plucked the first nugget from the American River. Janet Fullwood photograph

Outside Sugarman's office, just out of sight across a park road, the American River flows swift and cold past the spot where on Jan. 24, 1848, James Marshall plucked a gold nugget from the tailrace of a lumber mill belonging to John Sutter, a German-born entrepreneur who was building an empire for himself on a Mexican land grant centered in the settlement of Sacramento.

With that discovery, the world rushed in to propel California into the future. A year later, the Sierra foothills swarmed with fortune seekers, California was a household word all over the planet and the territory was on the fast track to statehood, which came in 1850.

As Sugarman likes to point out, it couldn't have happened anywhere else.

"California in 1848 was a conglomeration of tiny villages along the coast, a couple of presidios and some missions that enslaved native Americans. People back East were saying, 'Manifest destiny! Sea to shining sea!' They were starting to know there was something out here. But they were concerned with the coast. Everything inland was a wilderness. There were no boundaries, no law, no rules. The geopolitical situation in California was unique in the world. And then gold was discovered.

"If it had happened in, say, Pennsylvania, there would never have been an event like this."

For anyone interested in this time in history, Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park provides a generous dose of perspective. Visitors can only guess at the excitement, the hardship and the boredom that marked life in the foothills during the rowdy, hardscrabble days of the 1850s. But there's plenty to help the imagination along, starting with a nearly full-size replica of Sutter's Mill (the original washed away during flooding in the late 1850s and early 1860s), and a scattering of buildings dating from the 1850s, some with period displays inside. A stone wall at the river's edge marks the site of Sutter's original mill; from there, a path leads a short distance to the exact place where Marshall made his discovery. It's a popular spot with visitors who want to try their luck at gold panning.

Travel Wise Facilities: The park includes a museum (open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily), picnic grounds and five miles of trails leading through the park's wilderness and historic zones. Concessions include a restaurant, a carriage company, a trapper-and-trader supply store and the American River Conservancy, which offers natural history and children's activities. No camping is permitted. Getting there: From Sacramento, take Highway 50 to Placerville, turn north on Highway 49 and proceed 8 miles to the park. Hours and admission: The park is open daily during daylight hours. A park use fee of $5 per carload is payable at the visitor center. Special events: Historic Demonstration Day, June 13, features costumed docents demonstrating crafts such as ropemaking, pine needle basketmaking, carpentry and blacksmithing. Musical entertainment, historic buildings tours, and gold panning also are on tap. Gold Rush Days and the World Goldpanning Championships, Sept. 28-Oct. 4, is a Sesquicentennial event to include music, a market, a tent city, living history demonstrations and a parade. Christmas in Coloma, Dec. 13, will feature booths, living history, music and merriment.

A highlight of the park is a museum, perhaps the best in gold country, that tells the story of what happened in Coloma with exhibits, artifacts and a research library.

One often-overlooked item here is a map of the gold discovery site drawn by Lt. William Tecumseh Sherman, who came to Coloma in July 1848 as an adjunct to Col. William Mason, the military governor of California. Their mission: to confirm the discovery of gold.

The party "collected 270 ounces of gold and sent it back, along with Col. Mason's report, to President Polk in Washington. This, in and of itself, proved that gold was indeed abundant in California," explains Sugarman.

But, he adds, Sherman's map was defective: "He had the 'North' arrow pointed in the wrong direction."

One can only surmise that the young lieutenant learned a few things about compass directions before he went on to ravage the South as a Union general during the Civil War.

Besides the museum objects and the monuments, markers, plaques and historic buildings commemorating Gold Rush events, visitors to Coloma will encounter members of one of the strongest docent associations in the state park system. About 100 volunteers appear regularly, often wearing period costumes, to interpret the way of life in the 1850s gold fields.

Joe Bilotta, the organization president, teaches "interpretive gold panning," an activity he's well suited to explain, considering that he is so struck with the fever that he mines his own claim "on a river out of Nevada City."

Just which river, he'd rather not say, but the gold nugget on a chain around his neck and the 3-ouncer in his pocket let you know he's not just whistlin' Dixie when he gives this advice: "You have to be in the right place and you have to move a lot of dirt to find gold."

Visitors might also meet Rodney Earle Bland, who dresses the part of a saddle tramp. He often can be found at Bekeart's Gunshop "standin' around bee-essin' with the tourists and gettin' my picture took."

"I love it and they love it," the gray-bearded Bland says. "I've got my mug shot plastered all around the world."

That so famous a spot as the gold discovery site could have survived into the late 20th century without succumbing to development is a point of particular pride with Sugarman.

"People crave authenticity," he explains of the park's appeal. "Go to our cities today, and people are fed mediated experiences. Come here and you don't get a mediated experience."