Download or read book The Sutter Family and the Origins of Gold Rush Sacramento written by John Augustus Sutter and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John A. Sutter (1803-1880) could have become one of the richest men in California when gold was found on his property. Instead he lost his vast land holdings on the Sacramento and Feather Rivers and eventually left California penniless. Sutter always claimed to be the victim of charlatans, but he bore considerable responsibility for his downfall. He had amassed huge debts before the gold discovery and added even more afterward. In the rough dealings of frontier capitalism in gold rush California, Sutter was easy prey. Soon after the gold discovery, Sutter’s eldest son, John Jr., (1826-1897) arrived, but soon moved south to Mexico. Hoping to obtain compensation for the land that he and his father had lost, John, Jr., returned to California in 1855 to give his lawyer a thorough statement cataloging how both Sutters were swindled. This extensive document describes the dirty deals of the first great gold rush in the western United States. Sutter’s statement has not been available for sixty years. Editor Allan R. Ottley reproduced and annotated this statement, providing a full biographical context and offering an appendix, bibliography, and index. Albert L. Hurtado’s introduction updates the book, originally published in 1942.
Download or read book John Sutter written by Albert L. Hurtado and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-examines the life of John Sutter in the context of America's rush for westward expansion in a fully documented account of the Swiss expatriate and would-be empire builder and his times.
Download or read book Rise Ruin Restoration written by Cheryl Anne Stapp and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, Sutter's Fort attracts more than 100,000 visitors from all over the world, and occasionally the very famous come. Queen Elizabeth II scheduled Sutter's Fort as a must-see during her 1963 tour of California. Rise, Ruin and Restoration answers the questions visitors ask: - Why (and how) did Swiss immigrant John Sutter build a high-walled fortress in the wilderness? Who were his employees? - Who were the pioneers that traveled to California in covered wagons, making Sutter's Fort their initial destination? - What was the role Sutter's Fort played in the rescue of the Donner Party? The Bear Flag Revolt? The American conquest of California? - Why did the 1848 gold discovery bring ruin-and who owned Sutter's Fort after John Sutter left? When did the structure decay and collapse? - Why was it important to restore Sutter's Fort in the 1890s? How much did it cost? - What great discovery in the 20th century changed the ways in which visitors experience Sutter's Fort today?
Download or read book River City and Valley Life written by Christopher J. Castaneda and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2013-12-09 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often referred to as “the Big Tomato,” Sacramento is a city whose makeup is significantly more complex than its agriculture-based sobriquet implies. In River City and Valley Life, seventeen contributors reveal the major transformations to the natural and built environment that have shaped Sacramento and its suburbs, residents, politics, and economics throughout its history. The site that would become Sacramento was settled in 1839, when Johann Augustus Sutter attempted to convert his Mexican land grant into New Helvetia (or “New Switzerland”). It was at Sutter’s sawmill fifty miles to the east that gold was first discovered, leading to the California Gold Rush of 1849. Nearly overnight, Sacramento became a boomtown, and cityhood followed in 1850. Ideally situated at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, the city was connected by waterway to San Francisco and the surrounding region. Combined with the area’s warm and sunny climate, the rivers provided the necessary water supply for agriculture to flourish. The devastation wrought by floods and cholera, however, took a huge toll on early populations and led to the construction of an extensive levee system that raised the downtown street level to combat flooding. Great fortune came when local entrepreneurs built the Central Pacific Railroad, and in 1869 it connected with the Union Pacific Railroad to form the first transcontinental passage. Sacramento soon became an industrial hub and major food-processing center. By 1879, it was named the state capital and seat of government. In the twentieth century, the Sacramento area benefitted from the federal government’s major investment in the construction and operation of three military bases and other regional public works projects. Rapid suburbanization followed along with the building of highways, bridges, schools, parks, hydroelectric dams, and the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, which activists would later shut down. Today, several tribal gaming resorts attract patrons to the area, while “Old Sacramento” revitalizes the original downtown as it celebrates Sacramento’s pioneering past. This environmental history of Sacramento provides a compelling case study of urban and suburban development in California and the American West. As the contributors show, Sacramento has seen its landscape both ravaged and reborn. As blighted areas, rail yards, and riverfronts have been reclaimed, and parks and green spaces created and expanded, Sacramento’s identity continues to evolve. As it moves beyond its Gold Rush, Transcontinental Railroad, and government-town heritage, Sacramento remains a city and region deeply rooted in its natural environment.
Download or read book The Diary of Johann August Sutter written by Johann August Sutter and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1932 edition.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Politics of the American West written by Steven L. Danver and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 1566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Politics in the American West is an A to Z reference work on the political development of one of America’s most politically distinct, not to mention its fastest growing, region. This work will cover not only the significant events and actors of Western politics, but also deal with key institutional, historical, environmental, and sociopolitical themes and concepts that are important to more fully understanding the politics of the West over the last century.
Download or read book The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War written by Leonard L. Richards and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning historian Leonard L. Richards gives us an authoritative and revealing portrait of an overlooked harbinger of the terrible battle that was to come. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Americans of all stripes saw the potential for both wealth and power. Among the more calculating were Southern slave owners. By making California a slave state, they could increase the value of their slaves—by 50 percent at least, and maybe much more. They could also gain additional influence in Congress and expand Southern economic clout, abetted by a new transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. Yet, despite their machinations, California entered the union as a free state. Disillusioned Southerners would agitate for even more slave territory, leading to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, ultimately, to the Civil War itself.
Download or read book Sacramento s Gold Rush Saloons written by Special Collections of the Sacramento Public Library and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As early as 1839, Sacramento, California, was home to one of the most enduring symbols of the American West: the saloon. From the portability of the Stinking Tent to the Gold Rush favorite El Dorado Gambling Saloon to the venerable Sutter's Fort, Sacramento saloons offered not simply a nip of whiskey and a round of monte but also operated as polling place, museum, political hothouse, vigilante court and site of some of the nineteenth century's worst violence. From librarian James Scott and the Special Collections of the Sacramento Public Library comes a fascinating history of Sacramento saloons featuring the advent of all types of gaming, the rise of local alcohol production and the color and guile of some of the region's most compelling personalities..
Download or read book Sacramento Chronicles written by Cheryl Anne Stapp and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacramento boomed when forty-niners flocked to California, but the road from riverfront trading post to cosmopolitan capital was bumpy and winding. In this collection, historian and local author Cheryl Anne Stapp reveals the setbacks and successes that shaped the city, including a devastating cholera outbreak, the 1850s' Squatter Riots, two major fires, the glamorous Pony Express and the first transcontinental railroad built by Sacramento merchants. Even bursting levees and swollen riverbanks couldn't keep the fledgling city down, as Sacramento hoisted its downtown buildings and streets above flood level. Come discover the diversity of Sacramento's heritage from agriculture and state fairs to war efforts, Prohibition and historic preservation, and explore the historic sites that mark the city's development.
Download or read book Sacramento written by Steven M. Avella and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2003-09-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born of a country's collective desire for riches, Sacramento was resolute in its survival while other Gold Rush towns faded into history. It battled catastrophic fires, floods, and epidemics to become the original western hub and laid claim to the capital of a state that would one day have the world's fifth largest economy. The community's flourishing growth is not just a product of its economic viability, but a direct result of the cultural vibrance and fortitude of a diverse populace that remains the backbone of our country's most dynamic state.
Download or read book American Inventors Entrepreneurs and Business Visionaries Revised Edition written by Charles Carey Jr. and published by Infobase Holdings, Inc. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the previous edition: "This fun-to-read source will add spice for economics and business classes..."—American Reference Books Annual "...worthy of inclusion in reference collections of public, academic, and high-school libraries. Its content is wide-ranging and its entries provide interesting reading."—Booklist "A concise introduction to American inventors and entrepreneurs, recommended for academic and public libraries."—Choice American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries, Revised Edition profiles more than 300 important Americans from colonial times to the present. Featuring such inventors and entrepreneurs as Thomas Edison and Madame C. J. Walker, this revised resource provides in-depth information on robber barons and their counterparts as well as visionaries such as Bill Gates. Coverage includes: Jeffrey Bezos Michael Bloomberg Sergey Brin and Larry Page Michael Dell Steve Jobs Estée Lauder T. Boone Pickens Russell Simmons Oprah Winfrey Mark Zuckerberg.
Download or read book Coming Out Swiss written by Anne Herrmann and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anne Herrmann, a dual citizen born in New York to Swiss parents, offers in Coming Out Swiss a witty, profound, and ultimately universal exploration of identity and community. “Swissness”—even on its native soil a loose confederacy, divided by multiple languages, nationalities, religion, and alpen geography—becomes in the diaspora both nowhere (except in the minds of immigrants and their children) and everywhere, reflected in pervasive clichés. In a work that is part memoir, part history and travelogue, Herrmann explores all our Swiss clichés (chocolate, secret bank accounts, Heidi, Nazi gold, neutrality, mountains, Swiss Family Robinson) and also scrutinizes topics that may surprise (the “invention” of the Alps, the English Colony in Davos, Switzerland’s role during World War II, women students at the University of Zurich in the 1870s). She ponders, as well, marks of Swissness that have lost their identity in the diaspora (Sutter Home, Helvetica, Dadaism) and the enduring Swiss American community of New Glarus, Wisconsin. Coming Out Swiss will appeal not just to the Swiss diaspora but also to those drawn to multi-genre writing that blurs boundaries between the personal and the historical.
Download or read book The Great Medicine Road Part 2 written by Michael L. Tate and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early weeks of 1848, as U.S. congressmen debated the territorial status of California, a Swiss immigrant and an itinerant millwright forever altered the future state’s fate. Building a sawmill for Johann August Sutter, James Wilson Marshall struck gold. The rest may be history, but much of the story of what happened in the following year is told not in history books but in the letters, diaries, journals, and other written recollections of those whom the California gold rush drew west. In this second installment in the projected four-part collection The Great Medicine Road: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, the hardy souls who made the arduous trip tell their stories in their own words. Seven individuals’ tales bring to life a long-ago year that enriched some, impoverished others, and forever changed the face of North America. Responding to often misleading promotional literature, adventurers made their way west via different routes. Following the Carson River through the Sierra Nevada, or taking the Lassen Route to the Sacramento Valley, they passed through the Mormon Zion of Great Salt Lake City and traded with and often displaced Native Americans long familiar with the trails. Their accounts detail these encounters, as well as the gritty realities of everyday life on the overland trails. They narrate events, describe the vast and diverse landscapes they pass through, and document a journey as strange and new to them as it is to many readers today. Through these travelers’ diaries and memoirs, readers can relive a critical moment in the remaking of the West—and appreciate what a difference one year can make in the life of a nation.
Download or read book How the States Got Their Shapes Too written by Mark Stein and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island? Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware? How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado? All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book. How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who. This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today. The people featured in How the States Got Their Shapes Too lived from the colonial era right up to the present. They include African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women, and of course, white men. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Some are not, such as Bernard Berry, Clarina Nichols, and Robert Steele. And some are names many of us know but don't really know exactly what they did, such as Ethan Allen (who never made furniture, though he burned a good deal of it). In addition, How the States Got Their Shapes Too tells of individuals involved in the Almost States of America, places we sought to include but ultimately did not: Canada, the rest of Mexico (we did get half), Cuba, and, still an issue, Puerto Rico. Each chapter is largely driven by voices from the time, in the form of excerpts from congressional debates, newspapers, magazines, personal letters, and diaries. Told in Mark Stein's humorous voice, How the States Got Their Shapes Too is a historical journey unlike any other you've taken. The strangers you meet here had more on their minds than simple state lines, and this book makes for a great new way of seeing and understanding the United States.
Download or read book The Great Medicine Road Part 1 written by Michael L. Tate and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1841 and 1866, more than 500,000 people followed trails to Oregon, California, and the Salt Lake Valley in one of the greatest mass migrations in American history. This collection of travelers’ accounts of their journeys in the 1840s, the first volume in a new series of trail narratives, comprises excerpts from pioneer and missionary letters, diaries, journals, and memoirs—many previously unpublished—accompanied by biographical information and historical background. Beginning with Father Pierre-Jean de Smet’s letters relating his encounters with Plains Indians, and ending with an account of a Mormon gold miner’s journey from California to Salt Lake City, these narratives tell varied and vivid stories. Some travelers fled hard times: religious persecution, the collapse of the agricultural economy, illness, or unpredictable weather. Others looked ahead, attracted by California gold, the verdant Willamette Valley of Oregon, or the prospect of converting Native people to Christianity. Although many welcomed the adventure and adjusted to the rigors of trail life, others complained in their accounts of difficulty adapting. Remembrances of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails have yielded some of the most iconic images in American history. This and forthcoming volumes in The Great Medicine Road series present the pioneer spirit of the original overlanders supported by the rich scholarship of the past century and a half.
Download or read book The Great Medicine Road Part 1 written by Will Bagley and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1841 and 1866, more than 500,000 people followed trails to Oregon, California, and the Salt Lake Valley in one of the greatest mass migrations in American history. This collection of travelers' accounts of their journeys in the 1840s, the first volume in a new series of trail narratives, comprises excerpts from pioneer and missionary letters, diaries, journals, and memoirs-many previously unpublished-accompanied by biographical information and historical background.
Download or read book California History written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
