The following sources contain the underlying research that Andrew McLeod presented to the Sacramento Historical Society on January 27, 2026. These materials support the “Lost Sacramentos” hypothesis advanced in Railroads of a Missing Metropolis. Authorship is by McLeod unless otherwise noted.
Works Published with Archival Institutions
Forgotten Foundation: The Rise and Fall of the Sacramento Valley Railroad tells the story of an 1850s rail network that spurred a dramatic industrialization of the California Gold Rush. It was produced for the California State Railroad Museum and the Relevancy and History Project. Currently in pre-release format, this online exhibit will soon be published on the museum’s website.
Lost Gold Rush Towns of Sacramento explores the region’s severe land struggles, visiting six urban competitors that were wiped off the map in various ways. It pays special attention to turmoil in Sacramento City, as well as evidence of subsequent tampering in the historic record. This book was co-authored with Eric Webb and James Scott, on behalf of the Special Collections of the Sacramento Public Library (History Press, 2025).
The Other Side of the Tracks: An Unnatural History of the American River Waterfront focuses on a geographic puzzle: In a city defined by two rivers, why is there no waterfront on the stream that attracted argonauts from around the world? Extremely attractive land was depopulated by a variety of forces including the massive B Street railroad levee. This online exhibit was published by the California State Railroad Museum in 2022.
Unpublished Historiographic Essays
These sources examine how a historic subject has been written about by historians over time, revealing a pattern of obfuscation, confusion and sometimes even outright lies.
The Sacramento Valley Railroad: A Troubled Historiography (2022) shows that even lawful enterprises can be written out of history if they don’t suit the narrative of their triumphant competitor. While the SVRR was an important Central Pacific precursor – as well as a transcontinental rival – historians chose to shunt it out of our collective memory.
Riotous Memories: The Contested History of Sacramento’s Settler Uprising (2023) illuminates the struggle behind an apparently incomplete memorial at the site of the bloody “Squatters’ Riot” of 1850. Lynchings, assaults and suppression of dissent left behind a muddled recollection of the city’s most serious and bloody unrest.
Secret Intimacies and Mysterious Dealings: The Hidden History of California’s Vigilantes (2024) revisits the dark and violent 1850s, which early historians thought best to leave in the past. These unpleasant events provide a cautionary tale about how Californians were able to move past a conflict that reached the brink of civil war – an unfortunately germane topic for the present.
Other Unpublished Works
Negro Hill: Remembering an African American Mining Town (2020) and Norristown: A Prehistory of the Sac State Campus (rev. 2021) were both expanded into chapters of Lost Gold Rush Towns of Sacramento. Eric Webb was the primary author of the Negro Hill expansion.
Research conducted for Confluence Tours (2015-19) was captured in a blog during the early years of the inquiry that led to the Lost Sacramentos hypothesis. It includes important early writing about Settler leader Charles Robinson, the Sacramento Vigilance Committee, rogue speculators Sanders and Muldrow, and a corrupt judge named Lucius Foote, as well as the catastrophic Ejectment Suits of 1868 and the Homestead Associations of 1869. This research has not been updated to reflect recent findings, but primary sources are linked wherever possible to facilitate new research.
Lost Sacramentos 