John David Borthwick

J. D. traveled in Canada in 1847, south as far as New Orleans, then north. In New York, the gold fever seized him and he took passage May 1850 on a 200 tonne bark for Chagres. He crossed Panama by river boat and foot and took a small sailing ship from Panama City to San Francisco where he was weathered in until spring 1851.

J. D. arrived in Sacramento City in 1851 by river steamboat in the dead of night (3 am). After a short sleep (2 hours) in one of the hotels he took wagon to Hangtown.

After a time mining in the Hangtown area, J. D. found his talents with the pencil were more profitable and in demand than mining. Obtaining supplies from Sacramento, he traveled through the northern mines (including Downieville and Marysville), sketching and observing.

In a Coloma Hotel’s copy of the Illustrated London News, J.D. noted that their American Frontier correspondent had returned to England. J. D. submitted a drawing and an article, and offered to continue as correspondent. The article and acceptance appeared in January 1852’s edition.

He documented the 1852 floods, passing through Sacramento at a time when boats were used on the streets and when the "chief consolation was calculating the number of rats that had been drowned."

The season of 1852 he spent in the southern mines. In San Francisco in 1853, James Mason Hutchings, who had composed the "Miner's Ten Commandments" agreed to purchase J. D.'s "A View of Mokelumne Hill" for the illustration of the sheets to be sold in the camps.

J. D. sailed for Australia in 1853 and returned to Scotland via Panama in 1856. In 1857 he published materials from his California travels in Harper's Weekly, and in California Magazine. His book, "Three years in California" remains one of the classic first-person accounts of the period.