The casino's owner, Steve Wynn, put the nugget on display in the lobby of the Golden Nugget for several years, where it became a popular tourist attraction. The nugget weighs 27.21 kilograms (60 pounds) and is the largest gold nugget ever found with a metal detector.Īfter its discovery, the Hand of Faith was sold several times before being purchased by the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1981 for over a million dollars. The Marshall Nugget remains in the collections as evidence of the discovery of gold in California.The Hand of Faith is a famous gold nugget discovered in 1980 by Kevin Hillier with a metal detector near Kingower, a small town in Victoria, Australia. In 1861, the National Institute and its geological specimens, including this gold and the letter, entered the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Within weeks, President Polk formally declared to Congress that gold had been discovered in California.

Polk and for preservation at the National Institute. Sutter.'īy August of 1848, as evidence of the find, this piece and other samples of California gold had arrived in Washington, D.C., for delivery to President James K. A letter of transmittal from Folsom that accompanied the packet lists Specimen #1 as 'the first piece of gold ever discovered in this Northern part of Upper California found by J. Lucien Loeser by ship to Panama, across the isthmus by horseback, by ship to New Orleans, and overland to Washington. Folsom had journeyed to Northern California to verify the gold claim for the U.S. Army Assistant Quartermaster at Monterey. In June of 1848, Colonel Sutter presented Marshall's first-find scale of gold to Capt. According to Sutter's diary, Marshall stooped down to pick it up and 'found that it was a thin scale of what appeared to be pure gold.' Marshall bit the metal as a test for gold. John Sutter on the morning of January 24, 1848, on the South Fork of the American River at Coloma, California, when he saw something glittering in the water of the mill's tailrace. James Marshall was superintending the construction of a sawmill for Col.

This small piece of yellow metal is believed to be the first piece of gold discovered in 1848 at Sutter's Mill in California, launching the gold rush.

Golden nugget at the golden nugget