Sacramento, California

• 1. Indigenous Roots And Spanish Discovery

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  Before the first European foot touched the soil, Nisenan and Maidu people lived along the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers for thousands of years. Their diet relied heavily on acorns gathered from oak trees and roots collected throughout the year. In 1808, a Spanish cavalryman named Gabriel Moraga surveyed this valley and named it Río del Santísimo Sacramento. A writer accompanying Moraga described the scene as having canopies of oaks and cottonwoods festooned with grapevines overhanging both sides of the blue current. He noted that birds chattered in the trees while big fish darted through pellucid depths. The air felt like champagne to the explorers who drank deep of its beauty. They declared the place was like the Blessed Sacrament, leading to the name given to the river and valley.

• 2. Gold Rush And City Founding

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  John Augustus Sutter arrived at the confluence of the rivers on the 13th of August 1839, holding a Mexican land grant. He established Sutter's Fort, an adobe structure with walls ten feet high and two feet thick. By 1847, he owned an orchard and a herd of 13,000 cattle. James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma in January 1848, drawing thousands of prospectors to the area. John Sutter Jr. began laying out the City of Sacramento south of his father's settlement in December 1848. Samuel Brannan assisted him in this venture against the wishes of Sutter Sr., who was deeply in debt. The city incorporated on the 27th of February 1850, becoming the oldest incorporated city in California. A flood occurred on the 10th of January 1850, that devastated the new town before it could fully establish itself.

• 3. Floods And Infrastructure Battles

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  Hardin Bigelow served as Sacramento's first elected mayor during a period of extreme vulnerability to water. In early 1852, construction of the city's first levee was completed to protect the settlement from rising waters. However, a month after completion, the levee breached during the first major storm of the season, causing another flood. A new levee cost $50,000 but also broke, leading to more flooding of the city. Between October and December 1850, a cholera epidemic killed 1,000 residents, including Mayor Bigelow and 17 of the city's 40 physicians. Up to 80 percent of the populace left town following these disasters. On the 2nd of November 1852, the Great Conflagration burned more than 80 percent of the structures in the city. Total damage was estimated at six million dollars, yet 761 structures were rebuilt within a month. The Great Flood of 1862 caused the worst flooding in Sacramento's history, forcing Governor Leland Stanford to travel to his inauguration in a rowboat in January 1862.

• 4. State Capital And Political Center

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  The California State Legislature moved to Sacramento in 1854 with support from Governor John Bigler. Before this move, the capital had been Monterey, then San Jose, Vallejo, and Benicia. In 1852, the city offered its county courthouse to house the state legislature. The Classical Revival-style California State Capitol started construction in 1860 and finished in 1874. During the massive flooding of 1861, the legislative session moved to the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco for one session. From 1862 to 1868, part of the Leland Stanford Mansion served as the governor's offices during Stanford's tenure. The legislative chambers were first occupied in 1869 while construction continued around them. The Sacramento Constitutional Convention of 1879 named the city the permanent state capital. Today it remains the seat of the California Legislature and the home of the governor.

• 5. Diverse Demographics And Social History

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  In 2002, Harvard University's Civil Rights Project named Sacramento America's Most Diverse City. The 2020 census reported a population of 524,943 with racial makeup including 34.8 percent White and 19.9 percent Asian. Chinese people form the largest Asian ethnic group in the city, followed by Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Hmong, and Japanese residents. Sacramento holds the largest Fijian American community in the United States. Early in World War II, the Sacramento Assembly Center opened on the 6th of May 1942, to house Japanese Americans forcibly evacuated from the West Coast under Executive Order 9066. Inmates began arriving from Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties that day. The camp closed after only 52 days on June 26, transferring a population of 4,739 to the Tule Lake concentration camp. Returning Japanese Americans often could not find housing after the war, so 234 families temporarily lived at the former assembly center site before Camp Kohler burned down in December 1947.

• 6. Modern Economy And Urban Development

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  The Golden 1 Center opened on the 30th of September 2016, following an agreement between new owner Vivek Ranadivé and the city. The arena cost $558.2 million to build and replaced the old ARCO Arena. Downtown Commons district opened alongside the Golden 1 Center in 2016, featuring the Sawyer skyscraper with 250 hotel rooms and 45 condominiums. Sacramento has more than 120,000 public sector employees working for state and federal agencies. Major companies like Amazon, Apple, Intel, and Oracle maintain operations in the metropolitan area. The Port of Sacramento faces bankruptcy due to heavy competition from the Port of Stockton. As of 2006, West Sacramento took responsibility for the port's management. In 2013, the Sacramento Kings were kept in the city after Mayor Kevin Johnson formed an ownership group led by Vivek Ranadive. The city also hosts the California State Fair annually at the end of summer, attracting over one million people in 2001.