Downtown Sacramento

Let’s step back in time a bit.  When we left off, I had just wrapped up local sightseeing in San Francisco and around the Bay Area at the Little Farm in the Berkeley Hills.  That was mid-August 2019.  But a few weeks before then, I had a mini adventure in Northern California.  Yes, San Francisco and the Bay Area are in Northern California.  For this adventure, I headed to NorCal beyond the Bay.  My first stop was Sacramento, California’s state capital.

Before moving to San Francisco and learning its history, I often wondered why Sacramento was the state capital.  There are certainly much larger cities in California.  And it seems pretty out of the way.  But as I began learning while following the Barbary Trail on my 1st day of San Francisco sightseeing, Sacramento was extremely important in the development of California due to the Gold Rush.  It was conveniently located in the Central Valley just west of Gold Country, at the convergence of the Sacramento and American Rivers.  The Sacramento River was navigable all the way to Sacramento from San Francisco Bay.  Consequently, Sacramento became the western terminus of the Pony Express.  After the days of the Pony Express, Sacramento became an important rail hub.  The Great Seal of the State of California, created in 1849, depicts a Northern California scene, including a miner digging for gold.  There wasn’t much going on in Southern California at the time.  Given all this, it suddenly makes total sense that Sacramento is the Golden State’s capital.

Sacramento is actually the 4th city to be California’s state capital.  The other 3 were all in the Bay Area and located along San Francisco Bay.  The 1st was San Jose, at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay.  Next were Vallejo and then Benicia, both on the northern side of the Carquinez Strait, in the northeast of the bay.  With each move, the capital got closer to Sacramento.  Finally in 1852, 3 years after California became a state, Sacramento became the permanent capital–up the Sacramento River and away from the bay.

To get to Sacramento, I took BART to Richmond, where I caught a train to Sacramento.  I checked into a hostel, then went to bed.  In the morning, I got up and began my Northern California adventure.

Cathedral Square

I was fortunate to be in town during the Sacramento stop of a traveling installation of bronze sculptures by Mexican artist Jorge Marín called Wings of the City.  (I didn’t know at the time it was a temporary exhibition.  I just thought that Sacramento had some cool public art.)

The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, built in the Neo-Renaissance style, is one of the largest Cathedrals west of the Mississippi.  It was modeled after a church in Paris.

California State Capitol

The California State Capitol was built 1860-1874 in the Neoclassical style.  (I was always confused by the “capital” vs. “capitol” thing because in Massachusetts, the state capitol is called the State House, not the State Capitol.  And the State House is of course located in Boston, the state capital.)  As you can tell by looking at it, it was based on the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The California Assembly chamber is decorated in green to match the decoration of the British House of Commons.

The California Senate chamber is decorated in red, to match the British House of Lords.  The portrait of George Washington is by Jane Stuart, daughter of famous Washington portraitist, Gilbert Stuart.

The Columbus statuary group, which was placed in the State Capitol in 1883, was removed during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

As we learned at the Oakland Museum of California, the California grizzly bear, California’s state animal, was hunted to extinction by the early 20th century.

After my tour of the State Capitol, I picked up my bag at the hostel, took a bus to the Greyhound station, and took a bus to my next destination, where I checked into another hostel.  (Just like at the hostel in Taipei, I had a private room with a shared bath at both hostels.)

[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]