Our USA Advventure - Days 42 to 46 - Fort Bragg, Clearlake, Sacramento & Sonora

Clearlake, California was always going to be just an overnight stop for us on the way to Sacramento and it promised to be quite nice. However the lake is quite polluted and has that definite feel of a 'has been' town

Heading inland, in the rain, took us to Clear Lake which was anything but, and not to put too fine a point on it, a dump! I’ve said before that our view of a place is heavily influenced by our choice of hotel, or by the weather, neither of which were good, but it really was a dump! Still, got to have one bad one to appreciate all the good ones!

Sutter Fort in the centre of Sacramento was originally the only adobe brick built building in central California on what was to become Sacramento in 1840. John Sutter owned all the land on which the city stands but, for him, the discovery of gold was the beginning of the end. There were perhaps 200 people here in 1848, but by 1849 10,000 people arrived and then 100,000, all in search of their fortunes

To avoid the snow, we went to Sacramento, the State Capitol. It hadn’t excited either of us on paper, but it was low, so rain would be rain. We arrived, too early to check in, so I decide to take us to Sutter’s Fort, despite the fact it was in the centre of the city, it was just off the freeway. The guy on the gate said our 1hour parking meter should be fine, as 1/2 an hour was usually enough, but he hadn’t accounted for us meeting Dave. We walked into a room with some information boards to read (that was good, out of the rain) for a bloke with a huge beard to appear, say these were the only climate controlled rooms in the place, so the artefacts in the cases were original and we could ask if we had any questions. We obviously looked a bit dumbfounded as suddenly he was off, telling us all about John Sutter (whose name had cropped up at Fort Ross) a Swiss immigrant, who contrived, by ‘becoming Mexican,” to get a land grant for the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. He was happily terrorising Indians and dealing with the Russians in Alaska and the British from the Hudson Bay company when gold was discovered by one of his employees. He tried to keep it quiet but the beans were spilled by Samuel Brannan, who had gone to San Francisco, and bought all the picks, shovels and pans he could find, for cents, before shouting loud about the gold, running back to Sacramento and selling this equipment to prospectors for about 50x what he’d paid for it. He was the first to make a million from the gold rush!

It turns out that this central building is the only original building from John Sutters original fort (and even that has had major refurbishment), the rest of the fort was dismantled and used to build other buildings

I’m not convinced Dave wasn’t a ghost, he appeared, talked, and when Brian had to go out to the parking meter to put more money in vanished. He was so interesting though, even for me, not the history buff, he really brought it all to life. Well worth the stop.

California's State Capitol Building and the seat of it's government. Both the Assembly (lower house) and Senate (upper house) sit here, debate and pass the states laws. It's free to enter and tour round certain areas and they also offer free guided tours 

We then headed to the hotel, which wasn’t far, and right by the hospital, which did mean it was slightly odd, people in scrubs wandering about, apparently a lot of on call doctors and nurses use it, and then in the morning, at breakfast, everyone else was there because they had someone in the hospital. It seemed to be out mission to unite these people and talk about stuff to take their minds off the surgery that was going on on their nearest and dearest!

Its a beautiful building, erected between 1861 and 1874 (it took so long as the American Civil War broke out and there was severe flooding during the build). This is looking up into the dome

Wednesday we got the bus into the centre of the city, got off to head to ‘Old Sac’ went through an underpass and came up in another world. Reconstructed or preserved old buildings, interesting shops, a railway museum and the city museum. On asking the Tourist information guy which to do if we can only do one, he said the city museum, with the tunnels tour. Tunnels tour was full for today but we could perhaps do it tomorrow at 13.00 for an hour, and then head off to gold county. This seemed like a plan so we went to the State Capitol building, with perfect timing for the start of a free tour. Cindy looked most unlikely, but did give a good tour of the building which we both thoroughly enjoyed, before heading back to decide where to go next.

There are exhibition rooms set out as they were. This one was set out as it was in 1906, just prior to the San Francisco earthquake

We got up this morning, drove into the city, and parked, with slight trepidation with all our stuff in the car, and went to the museum before the tunnels tour. Sacramento, built on the confluence of the two rivers, Sacramento & American, had serious flood issues. Over the course of 20 years the American river was rerouted, levees were strengthened and buildings were raised, some by up to 25’, all while continuing about their business. They were literally lifted inch by inch on little acroprops, built up onto wood, more props and so on, by groups of men, starting lying on their bellies, kneeling, sitting, standing and then climbing the wooden blocks that the building was being supported on. Crazy idea, but it seems to have worked for the last 100+ years!

This is the Senate chamber. Only members are allowed in here, we could only peer through the door

We then set off down route 49, the road that connects all the gold rush towns. It can’t be coincidence that it’s called the 49 and the miners called the 49ers and that the Gold Rush started in 1849. I’ll have to find someone to confirm this tomorrow when we go to Columbia State Park to brush up on our Gold Rush history! A great drive to what seems like a lovely little town. More history tomorrow, then off to Fred and Maggie, at Maggie’s house in Bear Valley.

This is the Assembly chamber, equivalent to our UK House of Commons

This is a close up of one of the tables. They have a lift up microphone for when they want to speak and  buttons to press to vote for a bill. No 'divisions' here as we do in the UK

Just along from this balcony are portraits of past state governors. Most of them we didn't recognise but two we did: Ronald Reagan, the only governor who went on to become a president and the other has no name under it as he expects everyone to know who hw is. We're talking, of course, about Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Then we went to Old Sacramento historical district and what a fabulous place it is. There are 85 historical buildings here, 32 are restored originals and 53 are reconstructed. They are all in their original places but not at the same elevation. Each one (along with 1000 others in the city) were raised up by between 5 and 25 feet to bring them above the flood plain, a process that took 20 years to complete, starting in 1862 

It is a fabulous place

Sacramento became the western railroad terminal for the first US transcontinental railroad that connected east to west in 1869

They also have a gold painted tower bridge, whose central section raises to allow ships to pass through

A statue to the first Pony Express that operated in 1861, prior to the railway, to deliver messages between west and east in the, then, superfast time of 10 days, far exceeding the previous best of several months by ship round Cape Horn

We were quite surprised to see some police on horseback but, when we asked them they told us that Sacramento frequently gets clogged with traffic and they can bypass it on horse, also at that height they can see much better over crowds

This is a photograph of one of the buildings during its jacking up process. Beneath the structure are thousands of jacks all co-ordinated together by lots of shouting to ensure it is raised evenly. All this while business went on inside 

I love maps, so I loved this one! It's a map that gold prospectors arriving in San Fran were anxious to see as it shows the locations of where gold was to be found. If you zoom in you can see it says 'gold is found in all these streams' It was basically all the streams running off from the high Sierra Nevada mountains. The gold bearing granite and quartz had been pushed up by tectonic forces to create the mountains and rain had worn it away over millions of years and washed nuggets of gold down the rivers. In the first instance people could pick nuggets of gold up in the streams, then they had to pan for it through the sludge on the river beds, then the used hydraulic jets to blast away whole mountains (a process that was outlawed in 1868 due to all the silt washed downstream that caused flooding), finally by mining. The USA took California from Mexico in 1836, then a sparsely inhabited land, John Sutter settled the area around Sacramento in 1840, in 1848 gold was discovered, hundreds of thousands of people descended to the area in 1849. In 1850 California was incorporated as the 31st state of the USA and in 1860 the gold rush was over. Dredging and mining continued into the 1940 before it was all over.

A recreation of the Eagle Theatre that only existed for one year between 1849 and 1850 before being washed away by a flood. It's an example of the basic buildings of the time. It was made from parts of ships, wood and canvas, that were abandoned here as people rushed to get into the hills to find gold

We've left Sacramento now and are stopping on state highway 49 to visit one or two of the old gold towns that all those prospectors came to. We stopped off at a viewpoint on the 49 overlooking the old gold town of Jackson. Here is the headframe of the old Kennedy mine, named after Andrew Kennedy who started mining here with three partners in 1860. He apparently extracted $28,600,000 in gold from here before it was closed by government decree in 1942

While here in the US we have been enjoying a good few of these. There are micro  breweries almost everywhere, all brewed to a very high standard and in great variety. We've had no problems finding beers to suit our tastes on most nights. Lovely!

And, before we go, look at this very handsome chap we saw in Sacramento old town. What he/she is we've no idea but we're hoping Helen S or Tim might be able to tell us. An update will appear if they do. Helen says it's a Black Phoebe - what a great name, thanks Helen