Audioguides Sacramento

Sacramento sits at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, where in January 1848 a millrace at Sutter's Mill produced the gold flakes that set off the largest migration in North American history. The city incorporated in 1850, became California's permanent capital in 1854, and found itself flooded so frequently from those same rivers that in the 1860s and 1870s the city simply raised its entire downtown street level by up to ten feet. The original ground floors of Old Sacramento buildings became underground spaces, and the Sacramento Underground still runs beneath the waterfront historic district, now open for tours.

The California State Capitol, completed in 1874 in the center of a 40-acre park with its dome modeled on Washington's, is the organizing fact of the city's geography.

The Tower Bridge (1935), painted gold in honor of the gold rush, connects Sacramento to West Sacramento across the river. The Crocker Art Museum, established in 1885 and one of the oldest west of the Mississippi, recently expanded its collection to include substantial California art from the Gold Rush era onward. Sacramento has more trees per capita than any other city in the world, over 800,000 trees across 300 species, the result of deliberate street-tree programs since the late 19th century.