On November 21, 1852, Louise Clappe, a New Englander who had spent a year at a gold-rush mining camp in the Sierra Nevada, looked around in awe as she took her leave of the place. In a letter to her sister, she wrote, "Like an immense concave of pure sapphire without spot or speck, the wonderful and never-enough-to-be-talked-about sky of California drops down upon the whole its fathomless splendor."