California's Capital at the Gold Rush Delta — the city where the transcontinental railroad began and the Gold Rush converged on the Sacramento River delta, now a surprisingly sophisticated farm-to-table food capital with the most craft breweries per capita of any US city and a beautifully intact Victorian Old Town
Sacramento is the capital of California — a city of 530,000 at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, 130km northeast of San Francisco in the Central Valley. Sacramento was founded at Sutter's Fort in 1839 and became the terminus of the first transcontinental railroad (1869) and the supply hub of the Gold Rush from 1848 — both of which made it one of the fastest-growing cities in American history. Old Sacramento State Historic Park preserves the wooden-planked streets, Victorian commercial buildings, and riverboat levee of the 1850s Gold Rush city, including the California Stat…
The Sacramento Valley was home to the Maidu and Nisenan peoples before Spanish contact. John Augustus Sutter established Sutter's Fort in 1839 as an agricultural colony — the first significant non-native settlement in the Central Valley. James Marshall's 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill (in Coloma, 75km northeast) triggered the California Gold Rush, which brought 300,000 people to California in two years and made Sacramento the supply and administrative hub of the 49ers. Sacramento was incorporated as California's state capital in 1854, defeating San Francisco and San Jose for the desi…