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.
The confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers had been Nisenan (Maidu) homeland for thousands of years. In 1839 a Swiss emigrant, John Sutter, built a fort he called New Helvetia near the rivers and ran a private agricultural colony on Nisenan land — the settlement that became Sacramento began at his gate. The Gold Rush that followed brought enormous wealth and, for the Nisenan and other Native peoples of the valley, displacement, disease, and violence; the fort still stands as a state historic park, a record of where the city started and at what cost.
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.
