Modern Sacramento started when Captain John A. Sutter established New Helvetia, a colony for his Swiss compatriots. Sutter built a fort here and immigrants came. He prospered in wheat raising, flour milling, distilling, and in a passenger and freight boat service to San Francisco. The discovery of gold at Coloma in 1848 brought ruin to Sutter. Workers deserted to hunt gold, and he soon lost possession of the fort. The next year his son, who had been deeded family property near the boat line terminus, laid out a town there, naming it Sacramento City. At the entrance to the gold rush country, its population rocketed to 10,000 within seven months. Chosen as California's capital in 1854, the new capitol building was constructed at a cost of more than $2.6 million over a 20-year period.

Transportation facilities were important in the city's growth. In 1860, the Pony Express made Sacramento its western terminus. Later, Sacramento's "Big Four"--Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford--financed the building of the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierras. Deepwater ships reach the city via a 43-mile-long channel from Suisun Bay. Sacramento's new port facilities handle an average of 20 ships a month carrying import and export cargo from major ports around the world.