Lost Sacramentos

Tuesday, January 27: Railroads of a Missing Metropolis: The Sacramento Historical Society welcomes local historian Andrew McLeod to discuss a lost transportation network that would have supported a different web of communities and fostered a very different set of connections between Sacramento and its hinterlands, less lopsided and prone to flooding.

Sacramento’s industrial transformation began in the decade before the transcontinental line. In 1856, the Sacramento Valley Railroad began scheduled service from the Sacramento City embarcadero to Folsom. And that was just the beginning. As Theodore Judah’s most famous rails pressed eastward, tracks were already radiating from his first big project, the SVRR. Extensions included a direct line from Folsom to Roseville, an alternate river connection at Freeport, and branches reaching towards Placerville, Auburn and Marysville. At its center, well over a thousand workers toiled at the Folsom shops.

Join us on Tuesday, January 27th, as Andrew McLeod opens a window into a lost world of railroads, which will feature in a new online exhibit for the California State Railroad Museum. He is a coauthor of the Sacramento Public Library’s new book, Lost Gold Rush Towns of Sacramento, the former guide for Confluence Tours, and a past board member of the Society.

In other news: I’ve submitted my “culminating experience” report – much like a thesis for my MA in Public History at Sacramento State University – in which I introduce the lost waterfront community of Slater’s Addition and development threats thereto. Once my report is published, I’ll be sure to provide it here.