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Up The Road: Old Sac

Photo by jnjmoreno
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Flickr, Creative Commons
Trying to capture a feel of the area during it's gold rush days.

Today we continue exploring the heart of the Sacramento Valley. Comparing it to New York, the Big Apple, some people fondly call Sacramento the Big Tomato—a wry reference to the area’s agricultural wealth. But the California Gold Rush planted that seed. Early California ranching, farming, and other businesses developed to mine the miners, with their almost endless demand for food and supplies. So much more cost-effective to grow it or make it nearby than ship it around South America’s Cape Horn.

Credit Photo by Rojer / Flickr, Creative Commons
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Flickr, Creative Commons
To Old Sacramento Archway.

Situated so close to the gold fields of the western Sierra Nevada foothills, Sacramento quickly became the capital of the gold rush. The gold rush boomtown boomed first as a tattered tent city on the mudflats along the Sacramento River, an area more or less defined these days by the intersection of Front and J Streets downtown, just west of I-5. These eight city blocks, now both a state historic park and national landmark, capture the Old West ambience—especially during Gold Rush Days over Labor Day weekend, when suddenly the streets are dusty again and only horse-drawn vehicles are allowed. You can peek into authentic gold rush shops, play period games, and encounter genuine 19th-century characters.

While exploring Old Sacramento, note the elevated boardwalks and very high streetside curbing, reminders of the days when both the American and Sacramento Rivers regularly rampaged through town. Get the whole flood-proofing story, or close to it, on the Sacramento History Museum’s Old Sacramento Underground Tours. Guides show how the town “jacked up” both streets and buildings to accommodate nature, including features such as hollow sidewalks and sloped alleys.

Credit Photo by Wayne Hsieh / Flickr, Creative Commons
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Flickr, Creative Commons
Panorama of Old Sacramento at Sunset.

Otherwise spend time visiting museums and historical sites. The B.F. Hastings Building at Second and J Streets was once the original Wells Fargo office. The small communications museum downstairs honors Sacramento’s importance to Old West information flow. This was the end of the line for the original Alta Telegraph Company and the western terminus of the Pony Express, where weary horses and riders laid down their mailbags after the last leg of the 10-day, cross-country relay from St. Joseph, Missouri. (From here, correspondence went on to San Francisco via steamboat.) Upstairs are the original chambers of the California Supreme Court.

The Big Four Building at 113 I St., between Front and Second, Central Pacific’s original headquarters, originally stood on K St.; the building was moved to make way for the I-5 freeway. Downstairs is an open-for-business re-creation of the original 1880sHuntington & Hopkins Hardware Store, where with any luck visitors may be able to correctly identify 19th-century hardware. Upstairs: the railroad museum’s library/reading room, and a replica of Central Pacific’s boardroom.

Credit Photo by Prayitno / Flickr, Creative Commons
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Flickr, Creative Commons
Sacramento Southern Rail Road SSRR 2030.

The tiny, tin-roofed Old Eagle Theatre at 925 Front St. is a canvas reconstruction of the 1849 original, a venerable venue offering docent-guided tours and video program to school groups—and maybe vintage gold-rush theater during Gold Rush Days. Stop by the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum at Front and L Streets, to appreciate the radical minimalism of one-room schools.

Also in Old Sacramento is the state’s excellent railroad museum, showcasing California’s next dramatic chapter. The signal event came in spring of 1869, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads ceremoniously connected at Promontory Point, Utah. As Oscar Lewis noted in The Big Four, the state’s slogan at the time was: “California Annexes the United States,” half in arrogance and half in the spirit of play, as the wildest of the western colonies “prepared to take its place (near the head of the table) with the family of states.” 

Kim Weir is editor of Up the Road, a nonprofit public-interest journalism project dedicated to sustaining the Northern California story. A long-time member of the Society of American Travel Writers, Weir is also a former NSPR reporter.