Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Collection: Directories and Documents > Historical Clippings
Historical Clippings Book (HC-20) (169 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 169
Picturesque names of many — including ghost towns — still
dot today’s maps. Among them are Slumgullion, Roaring
. Camp, Pinch-em-Tight and Jackass Hill.
© Gold was the metal money of the hour and the mere suggestion of paper money would have been sufficient grounds
for hanging. You could bite the gold, stomp it, shoot a hole
through it. It was as tough as the folks using it.
© When the Gold Rush began, San Francisco numbered
850 souls. Twelve months later the population numbered
35,000. By the mid-50’s this figure would increase to a city
of 50,000.
© Many in the floodtide of settlers who arrived in California were contemptuous of the attempts to shackle them with
military law or order. Yet, there was a multitude of respectable folks who demanded statehood in order to contro! the
chaos in the wild mining camps. Not even the vigilantes in
San Francisco pacified them. Their demands finally led to
sweet victory when California was admitted to the Union’
on September 9, 1850. © 7 ->
© California had suddenly come of age. But the romantic
appeal of the bold and adventuresome Argonauts lived on
in the minds of men and the pages of history. Immortalizing
them, Joaquin Miller, “Poet of the Sierras;’ wrote:
“Those brave old bricks of Forty-Nine!
What lives they lived!
What deaths they died! :
Great horny-handed men and tall;
Men blown from many a barren land; Beyond the sea; men red of hand;
And men in love, and men in debt;
Like David's men in battle set —
And every man somehow a man.
They pushed the nailed wood aside,
They tossed the forest like a toy,
That grand forgotten race of men—
The boldest band that yet has been
Together since the siege of Troy!”
To that, Sam Brannan might well erupt: “Amen!”
If any place in Sacramento reflects
the history of the city—indeed the history of the state—then it is Sutter's
Fort, located at 27th and L streets. The
fort is one of the most unique attractions in the West. It is a reconstruction
of the original fort built in 1839 by
John Augustus Sutter, the Swiss emigrant who was the first settler in the
Sacramento Valley.
Originally called New Helvetia in
honor of Sutter’s old country, Sutter's
Fort was a mecca and supply point for
the wagon trains, trappers and adventurers who found their way West
over the Sierra Nevada in the 1840's.
Among the men who visited the fort
in those early days were John C. Fremont, the U.S. engineer who helped
secure California for the Union, and
Kit Carson, legendary Indian scout.
It was to Sutter's Fort, in January
1848, a few weeks before California
won its independence from Mexico,
that James Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill for Sutter on the American River near Coloma, brought the
piece of “malleable metal’’ he had
found that was to start the biggest
gold rush in history. And it was near
Sutter's Fort, on the banks of the
Sacramento River, in the fall of 1848
that Sacramento City was born. The
small settlement was laid out by Sutter's son, John A. Sutter, Jr., and was
at first a supply center for the settlers
in the valley. As the gold fever spread,
however, the small hamlet took on the
look of a boom town. Ships docked
daily from San Francisco and long
wagon trains pulled in regularly, disgorging new settlers and eager fortune hunters.