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    Sacramento
    Sacramento
    Sacramento
    Ebook130 pages29 minutes

    Sacramento

    By William Burg

    ()

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    About this ebook

    California s capital city, Sacramento, has played many roles over time, including Gold Rush boomtown, railroad terminus, regional industrial center, and seat of state government. These varied roles meant dramatic changes as the city grew outward and upward.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 29, 2008
    ISBN9781439636466
    Sacramento
    Author

    William Burg

    William Burg moved to Midtown Sacramento in 1993. In 2003 he became interested in local history and neighborhood activism, returning to college and graduating from Sacramento State University's Public History program in 2010. He joined Sacramento Old City in 2007 and became president in 2012. This is his sixth book about Sacramento.

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      Book preview

      Sacramento - William Burg

      inspiration.

      INTRODUCTION

      During the Gold Rush, when gold seekers reached Sacramento they stopped only long enough to buy tools and provisions before heading into the gold country. When they ran low on provisions, they returned to Sacramento to resupply, to seek entertainment and a hot meal, and sometimes to seek work when gold proved too elusive. Most who came to Sacramento sought wealth in the goldfields. A few realized that the best way to acquire gold was to have gold miners bring it to them in exchange for shovels, eggs, and whiskey. Men like Sam Brannan, Benjamin Franklin Hastings, Peter Burnett, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, and Mark Hopkins started their fortunes as Gold Rush businessmen, selling everything from dry goods to plots of land. Doing business in this frontier environment required sharp wits, a ruthless disposition, and tireless effort. In this economic crucible, amateur businessmen like John Sutter and his young son John Sutter Jr. were no competition at all. Within a few years of the start of the Gold Rush, both left the city they had helped to create.

      Sacramento’s prime location as a center for trade and transportation during the Gold Rush was so important that matters like the valley’s annual floods were secondary to the needs of commerce. Rather than move to higher ground, Sacramento’s citizens built levees and elevated downtown streets to keep the town above water. Several attempts to establish new communities above flood level, including Norristown, Hoboken, and New Sacramento, lasted only until flooding subsided. When the original levees and street raisings proved insufficient, Sacramentans built stronger levees and raised the streets higher. By 1869, the majority of Sacramento’s downtown core was above the flood waters, but additional street raising work continued until 1873. Street raising also reduced the risks of water-borne illnesses like cholera, which had ravaged the city in 1850.

      Another milestone achieved in 1869 was the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad. The selection of its terminus in Sacramento was due to the successful lobbying efforts of the same entrepreneurs, including Huntington, Crocker, Stanford, and Hopkins, who made their fortunes during the Gold Rush. Invited by Crocker, 12,000 Chinese laborers built the railroad. These workers came to Sacramento seeking employment, not easy riches in the gold country. In the following decades, immigrants from around the world came seeking the same promise of work, eventually making Sacramento one of the most diverse cities in America. The Central Pacific, later known as the Southern Pacific Railroad, grew to become the dominant economic and political power in

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