History of Sacramento, California
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This history of Sacramento, California is in addition to the material in the Sacramento, California, article.
[edit] Pre-Sutter history – through 1838
Indigenous people such as the Miwok and Maidu 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, and Native 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 in 1770 (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 of acorns and they devised methods of soaking pounded acorn flour to remove the bitter-tasting tannins in the nut.
Between 1805 and 1810 the Spanish explorer Gabriel 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 around Northern California, it was Joaquin Moraga and not Gabriel Moraga for whom the nearby city of Moraga, California was named.
[edit] Sutter Era – 1839 to 1848
Johann August Sutter (AKA John Sutter), born in 1803, was forced to leave Switzerland due to several bad business deals saddling him with a debt load he could not repay. Sutter arrived in New York City in 1834. After that he spent five years bouncing around the Western Hemisphere in places such as Santa Fe, Oregon, Hawaii, and Russian Alaska. Finally in 1839 he arrived in Yerba Buena (now San Francisco).
At this time Sacramento was a part of Mexico and Sutter became a Mexican citizen in order to get a land grant from Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. Sutter’s Mexican land grant was quite large – 198 square kilometers, to be exact (an area larger than the European nation of Liechtenstein). Sutter named this land New 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 private army of over 200. Sutter’s Indian Army was the most powerful force in that part of the world during the late 1830s and early 1840s. This is another reason that he was granted such a large degree of autonomy by the Mexican government – they needed his army to keep the Indians 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 in 1848 most of the immigrants bound for Northern California were headed to New Helvetia including the Donner 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 infamous California Gold Rush.
[edit] From Sutter's Land to California's Capital – 1848 to 1860
Many people believe that Sutter's New Helvetia eventually just sprouted a city and came to be called Sacramento. This is in fact not correct. In fact, the City of Sacramento was first planned by Sutter's son John Sutter, Jr. against Sutter’s wishes. As the Gold Rush brought a flood of settlers through New Helvetia into the nearby foothills of the Sierra 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 of 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 the geography of the city. Sutter Jr.’s plan to build a city was a success, and in 1850 the new California State Legislature made Sacramento the first city in the state to be officially recognized. Due to an influx of miners, the city’s population grew rapidly, reaching 10,000 before the American Civil War.
In 1854 the state legislature voted to make Sacramento the permanent state capital. Construction on the California State Capitol building 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.
[edit] 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 wealthy railroad barons known as The Big Four – namely, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland 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 the San 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 of Old 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 oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. It is now famous for its collection of "Western Art" from artists such as Albert Bierstadt.
[edit] Transition to modern times – 1901 to 1945
In 1903 the Sacramento Solons a minor 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 the Sacramento River Cats began playing at Raley Field in West Sacramento.
Sacramento City College was founded in 1916 and is the oldest institute of higher education in Sacramento. In 1926 the campus moved to its present location on Freeport 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 largest
[edit] Post-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 the United Farm Workers (UFW) led by Cesar Chavez. In the 1990s Joe Serna, Sacramento's first Hispanic mayor, named a park in Downtown Sacramento after Chavez.
The Sacramento Kings NBA basketball 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, the Maloof 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. The Sacramento Monarchs, the WNBA 2006 champs, and minor league baseball Sacramento 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, and Rancho Cordova. One plan for the city’s future suggests building a massive park in Downtown Sacramento called Gold Rush Park which would rival in size the largest municipal parks in the nation.
[edit] See also
[edit] Published works consulted
- Hurtado, Albert L., Indian Survival on the California Frontier. Yale University Press, 1990.
- Starr, Kevin, California: A History. Modern Library, 2005.
