Sacramento, CA news and local guide

Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma in 1848 brought thousands of miners, who squatted on Sutter's land and took his property. By December 1848, against his deeply indebted father's wishes, John Sutter Jr. and Samuel Brannan began laying out Sacramento City 2 miles south of the fort, on a grid of lettered and numbered streets drawn by Captain William H. Warner. Sacramento was incorporated on February 27, 1850, the oldest incorporated city in California. Its early years brought one disaster after another. A flood on January 10, 1850, nearly destroyed the city. Levees built under Mayor Hardin Bigelow broke. A cholera epidemic from October to December 1850 killed about 1,000 people, including Bigelow, and the Great Conflagration of November 2, 1852, burned more than 80 percent of the buildings. Still, the city's place below the gold country made it grow to 10,000 people, and in 1854 the legislature settled there after meeting in San Jose, Vallejo and Benicia. The Great Flood of 1862 was the worst in the city's history, and Governor Leland Stanford went to his inauguration by rowboat. Sources Wikipedia: Sacramento, California