The gold itself was found upriver. In January 1848 James Marshall spotted flakes in the tailrace of a sawmill at Coloma, and within a year the world arrived. Sacramento, sitting at the head of river navigation where the goldfields met the water, became the great supply hub of the Rush — the Embarcadero port, the wholesale houses, the wagon roads up into the Sierra. The city was platted at the end of 1848 and incorporated in 1850, the oldest incorporated city in California, a boomtown built to outfit a gold rush.
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.
