It should come as no surprise that the United States is focused on its 250th birthday; a quarter-millennium is no small thing. And we must reflect soberly as the Trump regime torture-tests political systems rooted in the American Revolution.
Sacramento also must reckon with its own anniversary, marking 175 years since its darkest and least-remembered days. While the 1850 “Squatters’ Riot” is recalled by many local historians, its aftermath is buried under thick layers of misinformation. And the whole following year is shrouded by collective amnesia about some of a young community’s most traumatic experiences. We had our own revolutionary uprising here in Sacramento, but it was apparently crushed and forgotten, with major developments in February of 1851.
So this month I’m launching an experiment to better understand that dark winter of ‘51, which began with “squatter trouble” the previous summer. Considering the significant problems plaguing secondary sources (explored deeply in my paper Secret Intimacies and Mysterious Dealings), I’m going back to the primary sources: I plan to at least skim the main news sections of three California newspapers that were published at the time: the Alta California (SF), the Daily Pacific News (SF) and the Sacramento Transcript. Where possible, I will also refer to Sacramento’s long-lost Daily Index.
I’ll treat each edition as though it were today’s paper – but also attempt to illuminate that ephemeral text with histories of widely varying quality. I’m honestly not sure what I’ll find. I do know that the month was marred by growing would-be lynch mobs. And I know that the first successful lynching was in Sacramento City. But how do we get from the Settlers’ Association to the Committees of Vigilance in a few short weeks? Let’s find out!
Sacramento has historically tended to not talk about its early traumas. It seems that this trend really kicked off in the summer of ’50. The Sacramento Settlers’ Association was rapidly building a revolutionary head of steam. And then its hottest heads got their guns and marched into town! In military formation! By the next day, the sheriff, the assessor and at least six others were dead. The mayor lay gravely wounded, along with Settler leader Charles Robinson. And the Placer Times reported that everyone was fine with the impending crackdown. “The few persons who were heard to promulgate opinions opposed to the action which the authorities have pursued, have prudently desisted from their course, and but one sentiment is known at this time among the entire community.”[1]
But other opinions did somehow persist. That fall, the Settlers published a regular newspaper from offices overlooking the intersection at which the gunfighting commenced – the Settlers’ and Miners’ Tribune, edited by Robinson and James McClatchy. The Settlers were a significant bloc within the first state assembly. And then, at the start of February, they pulled an audacious action in the heart of San Francisco, with apparently catastrophic results that unfolded over months and years.
The rise of San Francisco’s Vigilance Committees is somewhat understood by historians if not the general public. Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote volumes about what he called “popular tribunals.” But he carefully overlooked their connections to the intense land struggle that exploded in gunfire August 14-15, 1850, then dragged on for years after the Gold Rush faded. Bancroft is succinct in his scattered treatment of the 1850s’ squatter trouble, offering a few dismissive sentences about a misinformed rabble. Fortunately, a strange footnote spends more than six pages – in very small type, no less – laying out a richly sourced alternative viewpoint. One citation points to today’s edition of the Alta – the specimen from which I shall launch the present inquiry.
Gold Rush newspapers were not without their falsehoods, but they provide a window into how the time was understood as it unfolded. Journalists certainly discerned the seriousness of the situation and tempered their words to avoid loss of advertisers or worse (as they do today). However, they had no idea how long, severe and geographically widespread the Vigilantes’ reign of terror would become. But when I noticed that the author of Bancroft’s strange footnote – an uncredited writer who is clearly sympathetic to the Settlers – points to a new wave of squatter trouble just before the rise of the Viglantes, well, I got curious. And now, on this anniversary plagued by bands of masked gunmen roving the streets of American cities, I’m going to finally dig in.
It seems that the news from February 3 foreshadowed a dark winter of ‘51. The Settlers apparently overplayed their hand, and it seems that their downfall was entangled with the rise of the Vigilantes. The Alta reported that Nathaniel Page (and others) attempted to construct an 80 x 20 structure on land owned by Capt. Joseph Folsom, who attempted to stop him. Page attacked with an axe, Folsom responded with a pistol, and somehow nobody died; the bullet destroyed a watch in Page’s breast pocket. Yet this event seems to have rattled the editors, who emphasized that Folsom came to own the land from William Leidesdorff, who had been in possession since 1846. They were appropriately concerned that any property was now vulnerable to squatting. An accompanying column called for urgent legislative action: “The community stands upon the brink of a volcano.” (2/3/1851, 2.1-2)
What does this have to do with Sacramento? We see some familiar names from the interior – Leidesdorff received a Mexican grant that included land on which Folsom’s namesake city now stands (as well as Rancho Cordova east of Bradshaw Road). But more importantly these events would have a profound impact on our own city, provoking a collapse of order that would yield our own wave of lynchings, a brutal attack on at least one journalist, and a strong community response whose outcome remains uncertain. Historians have mostly remarked on how pleasant the weather was, in Sacramento’s winter from Hell.
Landowners and speculators in both cities no doubt had hoped for an end to the squatters. They might have settled for moderation as their organized antagonists gained representation in the new state government, with Robinson leading the assembly’s Settler bloc. But it seems the trouble persisted nearly half a year after the clash in Sacramento City. Just a day earlier the Alta warned of “More Squatterism” – which it framed as opportunistic blackmail against legitimate owners – reporting that “an individual has fenced in and squatted about one-half of Telegraph Hill.” (2/2/1851, 2.1)
“More” is the key word here. Determining who owned what was clearly an ongoing problem, inextricably bound up with severe bloodshed in Sacramento the previous August. And now, two days in a row, squatters were back in the news. Was it San Francisco’s turn?
[1] John F. Morse, “History of Sacramento,” in 1853-54 Sacramento Directory, ed. Mead B. Kibbey (Sacramento: California State Library Foundation, 1997), 62.
Lost Sacramentos 
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