Sacramento

The Nisenan and Plains Miwok peoples lived along the Sacramento and American rivers for perhaps thousands of years before Europeans arrived. In 1839 the Swiss-born John Sutter, granted the task of colonising the valley by the Mexican governor, settled at the river junction and called his colony New Helvetia. In January 1848 James Marshall, building a sawmill for Sutter upstream at Coloma, found gold, and by the end of the year Sutter's son and the merchant Sam Brannan were laying out a city on the riverbank two miles south of the fort. Sacramento was incorporated in 1850, a year of flooding, cholera and a squatters' riot over Sutter's land claims.

Floods shaped the city. After the great flood of 1861–62 the business district was raised by a storey, leaving buried ground floors beneath Old Sacramento. Sacramento became the permanent state capital in 1854 and was the western end of the Pony Express in 1860. In 1863 the Central Pacific Railroad, financed by four of its merchants — Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker — began building east from the city, completing the first transcontinental line in 1869.

In the 20th century government grew into the largest sector of employment, and military bases and aerospace work added jobs until the base closures of the 1980s and 1990s. The wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans devastated the city's Japantown, and redevelopment for the Capitol Mall later cleared much of the old West End. Old Sacramento was restored from the 1960s onwards, and in the 21st century new housing, the downtown arena and a revived Midtown have brought more people to live in the centre.

Sacramento's identity is bound up with government and farming. The Capitol, the courts and the state offices give weekdays their rhythm, while the farms of the Central Valley — rice, tomatoes, almonds, asparagus and wine grapes — supply the city's restaurants, and since 2012 it has promoted itself as America's Farm-to-Fork Capital. It is also known as the City of Trees, and its canopy of street trees shades most of the older neighbourhoods.

In 2002 a Harvard study for Time magazine named Sacramento America's most diverse city. It has large Mexican American, Asian American and Black communities, and its metropolitan area holds one of the country's largest Hmong communities and a large Ukrainian one. Tower Records began in Sacramento, the alternative metal band Deftones come from the area, and Greta Gerwig's film Lady Bird is set in the city she grew up in.

The Kings, the city's National Basketball Association team since 1985, are followed fiercely, and the city fought off a move to Seattle in 2013. Minor-league baseball draws crowds across the river in West Sacramento, where Major League Baseball's Athletics are playing temporarily until their Las Vegas stadium is ready. Midtown's Second Saturday art walk, the State Fair and summer evenings along the rivers are the local gatherings. Sacramentans are relaxed and informal, and often weary of being described as a stopover between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe.

About 525,000 people live in the city at the 2020 census, and nearly 2.5 million in the wider metropolitan area, which spreads into suburbs such as Elk Grove, Roseville and Folsom. Government, state and federal, is the largest sector of employment, alongside hospitals and health systems, the UC Davis Medical Center and California State University, Sacramento, and a technology and logistics sector in the suburbs.

The central grid holds the older neighbourhoods — Midtown, Land Park, East Sacramento, Curtis Park and Oak Park — with porches, bungalows and Victorian houses under heavy shade. Further out, post-war and newer suburbs dominate, and most households depend on a car. Much of the city's growth comes from people moving from the San Francisco Bay Area and from immigration from Asia and Latin America.

Homelessness, the cost of housing and flood protection are the issues most discussed. The city sits at the meeting of two large rivers, is counted the second most flood-prone city in the United States after New Orleans, and is protected by a long system of levees, and wet winters bring regular attention to their strength. Summer days are spent early and late to avoid the heat, with afternoons on the river, at a pool or indoors.

Sacramento's food begins with what grows around it. The Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta produce rice, almonds, walnuts, tomatoes, asparagus and wine grapes, and many restaurants buy from the surrounding farms. Certified farmers' markets run year-round, among them one of the largest in California under the freeway downtown on Sunday mornings, and the city holds an annual Farm-to-Fork festival of growers, grocers and restaurants.

The city's mix of communities shows on its menus. Mexican taquerías and bakeries are everywhere, and Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong and other Asian cooking reflects the large Asian communities of the city and its suburbs. The Gold Rush brought Chinese immigrants early, and Chinese restaurants have long been part of the city's dining.

Wine comes from the foothills of El Dorado and Amador counties, from Lodi to the south and from Clarksburg in the Sacramento Valley, and Midtown's bars and cafés are the centre of the city's drinking and coffee. Summer brings peaches, cherries and tomatoes at their best, and the region's farm produce is the theme of much of the city's cooking.