“I saw back into the time when I had learned to know how painful is the process of founding a new country. What loneliness, what privations, what trials of every kind, went to the first steps of even that rich and lovely country of California.” It was not gold that drew Jessie Frémont to California in 1848. Gold had not yet been discovered when she left on her journey. The Frémonts were there to make a new life.