This photograph, looking east, of a deluged J Street near Fourth Street captures the scale of the flood of December 1861. In the foreground is a sign for dentist W.H. Thomas, and the dry goods store of Patrick O'Connell and Jonathon Ryan. Just...
This 1861 photograph shows flooding at K and Front Streets. A nine-year stretch of calm weather was broken with record flooding in the winter of 1861/1862. The "What Cheer House" saloon is prominent to the right of the photograph as is Ebner's...
Resting upon two tiers of added earth at Tenth Street, between L and N Streets, is the California State Capitol building in 1869. The building’s grounds are barren, save a few saplings. Below the building’s façade are several workers. A...
Taken between 1928 and 1940, this photograph shows the eastern side of the rotunda of the California State Capitol. The interior of the rotunda is comprised of fifteen levels of steel and wooden planking, weighing a combined seventeen tons. The...
This 1865 photograph offers a view down J Street, showing, to the right, both the Metropolitan Baths and B.F. Hastings and Company. Hastings was a long standing bank in Sacramento and held distinction as the western terminus of the Pony Express...
Breathing its last breath on July 3, 2003, is the Comstock Building at Eighth and J Streets. The three-story building was constructed in 1861 by Leland Stanford and sold to burgeoning Sacramento businessman and native-Austrian Anthony Coolot. He...
Amassed before the gutted Comstock Building on July 3, 2003, are units of the Sacramento Fire Department. The fire started at 5 a.m., making short work of the historically vital building, constructed in 1861 and shown to the left. Started soon...
The Capitol soon after its completion. Notes on reverse read: "Started - Sept. 24, 1860 Cornerstone - Masonic ceremonies - May 15, 1861 Completed 1874 First occupied 1869 $2,600,000."
Pictured in 1955, is a building that served as a drop point for the Pony Express. It is located at 1015 Second Street. On the right side of the building, and next to the alley, is a marker, set to commemorate the overland mail service that ran...
Pictured on January 16, 1929, at 2324 L Street is the First Baptist Church, as seen from the northeast corner of Twenty-Fourth and L Streets. Built that same year, the church’s auditorium was designed to seat up to 800 with a Sunday school room...
This circa 1990 postcard shows Thomas Hill's "Great Canyon of the Sierra," which gained the prestigious New York Pallette AClub medal. E.B. and Margaret Crocker purchased the painting in 1873, then hanging it on the south wall of what would become...
Andrew Jackson Stevens loved railroads and mechanics and came around the "Horn" to California in 1861 after almost a decade spent as machinist, foreman, fireman and engineer on rail lines in the East. In 1869 Leland Stanford appointed him Master...
This circa 1900 postcard shows the California State Capitol building, as viewed from the northwest. Visible is ground level around the building, which was raised by 10 feet after the epic floods of 1861 and 1862. To the far right of the frame is...
The printed description on the back of this circa 1996 postcard states "In 1860, 80 riders completed the 1,966-mile distance between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento on horseback in less than 10 days. In 1861, the completion of Western Union's...
This circa 2000 postcard, taken within the Old Sacramento State Historic Park, shows a carriage making its way along Second Street, between J and K streets, and by the B.F. Hastings building. Constructed in 1852/53, it stood as the headquarters...
This circa 1915 postcard shows the St. Joseph's Academy at Eighth and G streets. The pictured structure - facing G Street - held the school's classrooms, refectories, chapel, dining room, sleeping rooms and kitchen. The Sisters of Mercy had...
This circa 1996 postcard provides an aerial view of the California State Capitol building, as seen from the west. The Capitol was originally constructed, from 1861 to 1873, of brick, providing no safety for the horizontal stresses brought on by...
This circa 1909 postcard, labeled in error, shows J Street, looking west, from its intersection with Tenth Street. Street car rails fill J Street, while, to the right, is Plaza Park, the site of Sacramento's first hay scale, and what was...
Groundbreaking for the Capitol occurred on September 24, 1860. The corner stone was laid on May 15, 1861. Construction covered a period of 14 years with special taxes levied to sustain the project. “Until the roof was built in 1868, work...
Sacramento High School is located at 2315 Thirty-Fourth Street in Sacramento, California. Founded just one week after San Francisco’s Lowell High School opened its doors in mid-August 1856, “Sac High” has matured into the second oldest high...
