- History of Sacramento, California
This history of Sacramento, California is in addition to the material in the
Sacramento, California , USA, article.Pre-Sutter history – through 1838
Indigenous people such as the Miwok andMaidu Indians had dwelt in the present-day Sacramento area for perhaps as long as thousands of years (the precise length of time is subject to dispute among historians, anthropologists, andNative American studies scholars, although no sources exist to document the origins of the pre-Columbian peoples that populated central California.Anthropologist
Alfred L. Kroeber estimated that in1770 (prior to large-scale European-American settlement of the Sacramento area) the Maidu population was roughly 9,000. The Maidu people can be roughly divided into three groups, the Nisenan, Mountain Maidu, and Konkow. It was the Nisenan who occupied the area that is now Sacramento.Kroeber's estimate for the total Miwok population in 1770 was roughly 11,000. These estimates for Native populations include members of the Miwok and Maidu tribes throughout California, not strictly in the Sacramento area.
Both the Miwok and Maidu peoples were hunters and gatherers. Since
oak trees are plentiful in the area, their diet consisted largely ofacorn s and they devised methods of soaking pounded acornflour to remove the bitter-tasting tannins in the nut.Between
1805 and1810 the Spanish explorerGabriel Moraga "discovered" and explored the Sacramento area, and is credited with naming both the river and the valley "Sacramento". Although he did much exploring in and aroundNorthern California , it wasJoaquin Moraga and not Gabriel Moraga for whom the nearby city ofMoraga, California was named.utter Era– 1839 to 1848
Johann August Sutter (AKA
John Sutter ), born in1803 , was forced to leaveSwitzerland due to several bad business deals saddling him with a debt load he could not repay. Sutter arrived inNew York City in1834 . After that he spent five years bouncing around theWestern Hemisphere in places such as Santa Fe,Oregon ,Hawaii , andRussian Alaska . Finally in 1839 he arrived in Yerba Buena (nowSan Francisco ).At this time Sacramento was a part of
Mexico and Sutter became a Mexican citizen in order to get a land grant from GovernorJuan Bautista Alvarado . Sutter’s Mexican land grant was quite large – 198square kilometers , to be exact (an area larger than the European nation ofLiechtenstein ). Sutter named this landNew Helvetia and in 1840 began construction of Fort Sutter, which remains one of the most famous historical landmarks in Sacramento.Sutter viewed New Helvetia as a possible
agrarian utopia , as his own kingdom in the wilderness. Certainly New Helvetia operated as a semi-autonomous governing unit within Mexico as it was the strongest and most populated European-American outpost in the northern part of Mexican California. Sutter employed hundreds of Indians and whites to work on his ranch, but also had a privatearmy of over 200. Sutter’s Indian Army was the most powerful force in that part of the world during the late1830s and early1840s . This is another reason that he was granted such a large degree of autonomy by the Mexican government – they needed his army to keep theIndians of Northern California under control. By so doing, Sutter was stabilizing that remote part of their country for the Mexican government.Many immigrants came from other parts of the country to live and work on and around New Helvetia. In fact, prior to the discovery of
gold in1848 most of the immigrants bound for Northern California were headed to New Helvetia including theDonner Party , who were unable to complete their trip as originally planned due to weather and other delays.As part of the commercial empire of New Helvetia, Sutter founded a
lumber mill at Coloma. This was where the first discovery of gold was made that sparked the infamousCalifornia Gold Rush .From Sutter's Land to California's Capital – 1848 to 1860
Many people incorrectly assume Sutter's New Helvetia simply sprouted a city that came to be called Sacramento. In fact, the City of Sacramento was founded in the fall of 1848 by Sutter's son, John "August" Sutter, Jr. (in collaboration with merchant/land speculator
Sam Brannan ), and laid out by Captain William H. Warner of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (with assistance from futureAmerican Civil War generalsWilliam Tecumseh Sherman andEdward Ord ) against the elder Sutter’s wishes. As the Gold Rush brought a flood of settlers through New Helvetia into the nearbyfoothills of theSierra Nevada mountains (the so-called "Mother Lode " – an area of rich gold deposits), Sutter Jr. believed that money could be made in starting a city in the part of New Helvetia at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers.The city was planned along a grid of numbered and lettered streets. This pattern still exists in
Downtown Sacramento from C Street to Broadway, making navigation relatively simple even for those unfamiliar with thegeography of thecity . Sutter Jr.’s plan to build a city was a success, and in 1850 the newCalifornia State Legislature made Sacramento the first city in the state to be officially recognized. Due to an influx ofminers , the city’s population grew rapidly, reaching 10,000 before theAmerican Civil War .In 1854 the state legislature voted to make Sacramento the permanent state capital. Construction on the
California State Capitol commenced in 1860 but did not finish for fourteen years.Sacramento's first daily newspaper, "
The Sacramento Union ", began in 1851. It soon had competition in the form of The Daily Bee, which began in 1857 and later changed its name to "The Sacramento Bee ". The Bee is now the only major daily newspaper in Sacramento, but the Union survived until 1994.The Bee's second editor, James McClatchy ran for sheriff but lost due to fraud. Ballots were hidden by McClatchy's opponents so that they could not be counted, and many of these hidden ballots were discovered in the chimney of the
Masonic Lodge when it was torn down in 1868.The Railroad and the River City – 1861 to 1900
The
First Transcontinental Railroad started (from the west) in Sacramento and its construction began in 1863. It was financed largely by a group of wealthyrailroad barons known as "The Big Four " – namely,Mark Hopkins ,Charles Crocker ,Collis P. Huntington , andLeland Stanford . With this and the completion of other connecting railroad lines, Sacramento became an important hub of rail transportation in Northern California.Sacramento was also a site of commercial importance in the late
19th century due to the junction of the Sacramento and American rivers, both of which were used for shipping goods from other parts of Northern California down to theSan Francisco Bay Area . Flooding from the rivers was a consistent problem, but eventually Sacramentans raised the level of their city through landfill and the second stories of many houses became the first. This is still evident in the historic riverfront neighborhood ofOld Sacramento where the basements on most buildings were clearly once the ground floors.Charles Crocker's railroad fortune eventually became part of the founding endowment of the
Crocker Art Museum which, founded in 1885, is the oldestart museum west of theMississippi River . It is now famous for its collection of "Western Art" from artists such asAlbert Bierstadt .Transition to modern times – 1901 to 1945
In 1903 the
Sacramento Solons aminor league baseball team began to play. The Solons played intermittently in Sacramento between 1903 and 1976, with a continuous stretch between 1918 and 1960. After the end of the Sacramento Solons franchise in 1976, Sacramento went without a minor league baseball team until 2000 when theSacramento River Cats began playing atRaley Field in West Sacramento.Sacramento City College was founded in 1916 and is the oldest institute ofhigher education in Sacramento. In 1926 the campus moved to its present location onFreeport Boulevard .In 1920, Sacramento adopted the charter that it currently uses which stipulates a council-and-manager style government. In 1923 Sacramento voters approved the creation of SMUD – the
Sacramento Municipal Utility District . SMUD still operates today and is the 6th largestPost-World War II to the present day - 1946 to present
Sacramento’s preeminent university,
California State University, Sacramento (alias "Sac State"), was founded in 1947.In
1966 , Sacramento was the endpoint of a civil rights march of theUnited Farm Workers (UFW ) led byCesar Chavez . In the 1990sJoe Serna , Sacramento's firstHispanic mayor, named a park in Downtown Sacramento after Chavez.The
Sacramento Kings NBAbasketball franchise moved to Sacramento in 1985 and are currently Sacramento’s major professional sports team. Attendance at Kings games is always full or nearly full and the team enjoys very broad support from Sacramento residents, however currently there is a controversy over the future of the franchise because the team owners, theMaloof Family, want to build a new publicly funded stadium in Downtown Sacramento and there is ambivalence among some in the city about the expense of the project vis-à-vis its potential gains. TheSacramento Monarchs , the WNBA 2006 champs, and minor league baseballSacramento River Cats also play in the capital city.As of 2006 , Sacramento is still growing very rapidly and new homes continue to be built in the city as well as in rapidly-expanding suburbs such as Elk Grove, Folsom, Roseville, Citrus Heights, Rocklin, Lincoln, and Rancho Cordova. One plan for the city’s future suggests building a massive park in Downtown Sacramento calledGold Rush Park which would rival in size the largest municipal parks in the nation.ee also
*
History of California Published works consulted
*Hurtado, Albert L., Indian Survival on the California Frontier.
Yale University Press , 1990.
*Starr, Kevin, California: A History. Modern Library, 2005.External links
* [http://www.thediscovery.org/history/his_peo.html Discovery Museum’s List of Famous People in Sacramento History]
* [http://www.sacramentohistory.org/ Sacramento History Online]
* [http://www.scc.losrios.edu/scc_history.html History of Sacramento City College]
* [http://worldfacts.us/US-Sacramento.htm World Facts Index: Sacramento, California]
* [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sac/faq/part5/ Sacramento, California Usenet FAQs]
* [http://www.sacramenities.com/history/SacHistoryOnline/history.html Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center: Sacramento History Online]
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