Why Sacramento For California

California is rife with major cities. To be sure, international tourist destinations, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Newport Beach seem to dominate talk of California. The same can be said of quaint college towns like Berkeley, Davis, and Irvine, or alternative lifestyle meccas, like Big Sur and San Francisco again, seldom does the capital of the Golden State get its due.

Sacramento, named by the Spanish army officer, Gabriel Moraga, was little more than a trading post when John Sutter arrived in 1839 from Switzerland. Within ten years he and his heirs would guide the transformation of the trading post into a military barracks for the U.S. Army and eventually into an incorporated city. Sacramento is the oldest incorporated city in the state, having been invested in 1850. This does not mean it is the oldest, however, as that distinction belongs to Monterey.

The capital of California was moved from Monterey after the defeat of Mexico during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). The first city to be designated the new capitol was San Jose. When the state legislature met there in 1850, it was argued the capitol should be moved further inland to avoid retribution either from Mexico or the Spanish Empire.

Two years earlier, in 1848, James Marshall had discovered gold in the American River in Coloma, about 50 miles away from Sacramento. In the years that followed, Sacramento had become the inheritor of the California Gold Rush. The city flooded with new residents and economic prosperity. As evidence of Sacramentos growing importance, the Transcontinental Railroad terminated in the city, solidifying it stature as the gateway city to California.

With brief stints in Vallejo and Benicia, the capitol was moved, finally, to Sacramento in 1854. Taking advantage of the citys tremendous infrastructure and rail access, the Constitutional Convention named Sacramento the permanent capitol of California in 1879. Inspired by the nations capitol, the California State Capitol was not actually completed until 1874, where it stands to this day in tribute to the vision and foresight of John Sutter.

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