 The trip to the east coast could be executed after about 1850 in as short as 40 days if all ship connections could be met with a minimum of waiting.Steamboats plied the Bay Area and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers that flowed nearer the goldfields, moving passengers and supplies from San Francisco to Sacramento, Marysville and Stockton, California—the three main cities supplying the gold fields.The city of Stockton, on the lower San Joaquin, quickly grew from a sleepy backwater to a thriving trading center, the stopping-off point for miners headed to the gold fields in the foothills of the Sierra.