The Gold Miners inherited a home stadium, front office staff and much of the roster of the Sacramento Surge from the defunct World League of American Football.

When the WLAF suspended operations in 1992, Surge owner Fred Anderson received a franchise in the CFL after that league expanded to the United States in 1993.

One notable team administrator was Jack Youngblood, who was the Gold Miners' Director of Marketing in 1993 and 1994, which was a similar post he held with the Surge in 1991 and 1992.

Rick Mueller, the team's wide receivers coach (after serving as a defensive assistant with the Surge) and later director of player personnel, later would become general manager of the Omaha Nighthawks in the United Football League.

When the 1993 CFL season started, the Gold Miners, with an all-US staff, took some time to learn the intricacies of Canadian football.

In their first season, the Sacramento Gold Miners entered the CFL history books by: It is sometimes stated that the Gold Miners were the first American team to play against a Canadian team and to play on Canadian soil when they were the guests of the Ottawa Rough Riders (losing 32–23) on July 7.

The Gold Miners were once again a part of CFL history when they played against the Las Vegas Posse in Sacramento on July 8, 1994.

The Miners would have finished fourth with a 10–7–1 record, if not for a poor call by the officials in the team's last game of the season in Edmonton.

Despite a mediocre on-field record, the Gold Miners represented a serious attempt to form a viable professional football organization.

Since the San Antonio club that was also supposed to be a part of the 1993 expansion had folded, the Gold Miners were the only American team in the CFL during the 1993 season.

He planned to complete a project that had been started several years earlier to lure the then-Los Angeles Raiders to Sacramento, but had ended up being mothballed.

Faced with an unsustainable travel situation and the lack of a suitable facility, Anderson moved the team to San Antonio as the Texans for the 1995 CFL season.

San Antonio had the benefits of having a brand-new stadium, the Alamodome, and was geographically close to the American CFL clubs in Shreveport, Memphis, and Birmingham, greatly reducing travel burdens.