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F., 4 16 Joaquin and its tributaries. As late as 1845 the camp was occupied by Canadians. In 1841 Charles Weber -arrived in California as a member of the Bidwell-Bartleson emigrant party. Weber subsequently settled on ,a point of land in present-day downtown Stockton (Weber' s Point) and in partnership with Guillermo Gulnac formed a colony near Stockton. On January 13, 1844, Weber, F Gulnac and others received a tract of land called the Rancho del Campo de los Franceses, an area of 38, 747 acres (about 76 A-- square miles) . Eventually, after many hardships and financial difficulties Gulnac sold his interest in the colony to Weber. French Camp failed to prosper, but Stockton flourished thanks to its superior river access, and by 1849 had grown to a community of one thousand. In the early years the Central Valley was thinly populated, but this did not long prevail. About the same time that the Spanish (Mexican) land grants were being taken up, gold was discovered in the tail race at Sutter's Sawmill on the American River. This discovery, of course, resulted in the rapid invasion of California by gold seekers, and set the stage for the future development of the Central Valley. Marshall found gold in January, 1848: by June news of the discovery brought thousands of prospectors to the valley and especially to the adjacent Sierra Nevada "Mother Lode" region. An indirect, although eventually decisive consequence of the Gold Rush was the occupancy of key points in the Central Valley by ferry operators, storekeepers, inn keepers, and others who supplied the miners with goods and transportation. Nine ferries were operated along the San Joaquin, most of which appeared and disappeared during the course of a few decades as the flow of miners waxed and waned. By the 1850s people began to settle in the Central Valley, having discovered that they could make a better living supplying . the mining camps with meat, horses and other products than by actually engaging in mining. Sheep, cattle and horses had been introduced in central California when the missions were secularized. By 1855, according to Tinkham (1921: 52) , there were 1, 210 horses in the Stanislaus region; by 1871 there were # 100, 136, and sheep increased from 3,747 to 170,000 (Gooch 1988) . During the 18601s, however, natural disasters began to decimate the livestock industry. Thousands of sheep and cattle perished in the great flood of 1862, and during the following year disease - attacked the surviving sheep. In 1864 thousands of animals _ failed to survive a prolonged drought.