Office of the California Star Newspaper

The newspaper that should have broken the gold story talked its readers out of it. The Star's editor, Edward Kemble, not yet twenty, went up to Sutter's mill in April 1848, came back without gold and dismissed the discovery in print as a sham. Within weeks the paper's own publisher, Sam Brannan, was in the street waving a bottle of gold dust. By 14 June the staff had gone to the diggings, and Kemble closed the Star with hasta luego. No state plaque stands here; the bronze is the Clampers' of 1937.

What the plaque says

On this site January 9, 1847 the California Star, the first newspaper in San Francisco, was published by Samuel Brannan This marker placed by E Clampus Vitus February 6, 1937

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Beach Overlook — 11 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.
• Muir Woods National Monument — 11 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Earthquake Trail — 27 mi
  A short loop along the San Andreas, where a broken fence shows how far Point Reyes moved in under a minute in 1906.
• Kule Loklo — 28 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Portsmouth Plaza — steps away
• First Public School — steps away
• Eastern Terminus of Clay Street Hill Railroad — steps away
• Site of the Jenny Lind Theatre and San Francisco City Hall — steps away