Page 28 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book
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land around Sacremento, and so it was not developed for several centuries. Mountain man Jedediah Smith came this way in 1827 and named the Sacramento Valley the “Valley of the Bonaventure” but he did not stay. This is why the area was still free from European settlers when John Augustus Sutter arrived in 1839.
John Sutter was sailing down the coast from Alaska, but a storm forced him to put in at San Francisco. John Sutter determined to stay and develop the area
The flood of 1850
inland of the coast. So he asked the governor for land. The governor agreed, on the condition Sutter became a Mexican citizen.
Sutter built a fort next to a
landing stage or wharf on the river (embarcadero) in 1840. He was of Swiss origin and initially called the area New Helvetia. John Sutter raised a private army composed of Native Americans. When people began to follow the trails west in the mid 19th century, they used
Sacramanto in 1852.
