The next line started where the last one ended. Four Sacramento merchants — Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker, the "Big Four" — backed Theodore Judah's scheme for a railroad over the Sierra, and in 1863 the Central Pacific broke ground in Sacramento. Crews blasted and bored east through the mountains until, in 1869, the line met the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, and the country was bound together by rail. The roundhouses and shops stayed in Sacramento; today the California State Railroad Museum, the largest in the United States, anchors the Old Sacramento waterfront.
It nearly washed away more than once. The rivers that made Sacramento a port also flooded it — catastrophically in 1850 and again in 1862 — and rather than move, the city raised itself, jacking up buildings and filling the streets a full story higher. That is why Old Sacramento has an "underground": the original ground floors are now basements. The levees and the raised grade held, and in 1854 the young river city won the prize that fixed its future — it became the capital of California, and the domed State Capitol rose over Capitol Park by 1874.
Why People Visit Sacramento
Sacramento rewards travelers who want history, rivers, and shade rather than a beach — the Gold-Rush waterfront, the railroad that started here, the capitol, and a walkable grid under a famous tree canopy. People come for Old Sacramento and the Railroad Museum, for the Capitol and the gold bridge, and for an easy California day where frontier history and a leafy capital city sit side by side at the meeting of two rivers.
