Join some Delta rats for a short tour of the fabulous California Delta. Bill Wells the Executive Director of the California Delta Chambers & Visitor’s Bureau gives a tour of Georgiana Slough and Walnut Grove, Mark Wilson a professional fishing consultant gives some tips for fishing in the Rio Vista area, and finally visit the Old Sugar Mill in Clarksburg to learn the history of the area and see an interview with John Carvalho of Carvalho Family Winery. You can’t learn much about the Delta in a half hour but this should give you an idea of the fun and excitement awaits you in the region.
Author: Bill Wells
Executive Director of the California Delta
Chamber & Visitor’s Bureau
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The Mexican Government surely became concerned about the interlopers ferreting around in their territory and it is believed that this is what led them to grant John Sutter his vast tract at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. One of Sutter’s boats was the schooner Isabella which legend has it had been the private yacht of King Kamehameha the Great of the Sandwich Islands, possibly the first yacht in the Delta! Leaving what is now San Francisco in August of 1839 it took Sutter and his band eight days to find the entrance to the Sacramento after passing through Carquinez Straits which speaks to the maze of waterways even then. Sutter eventually landed on the bank of the American River at about where the city dump of Sacramento is located. He built his fort nearby at what is now the corner of 27th and L streets in Sacramento. Sutter became a Mexican citizen on August 29, 1840 and was appointed Captain in the Mexican Army as well as judge and representative of the “Government at the Frontier of the Rio Sacramento”. Sutter’s treatment of the Indians is a matter of controversy. Certainly he treated them no worse than did the Mexicans or the Spanish before them. What is known is that he minted tin coins with stars stamped into them for payment to the Indians for work performed and the coins could be redeemed later for food or dry goods in Sutter’s store.
Charles Weber migrated westward and arrived at John Marsh’s ranch at the base of Mt. Diablo in October of 1841. Weber made his way to Sutter’s fort and was employed there in the winter of 1841. Sutter sponsored Weber to obtain Mexican citizenship, which made Weber eligible to receive a land-grant from Mexico. In 1844 Captain Charles Weber and William Gulnac obtained a Mexican land grant for the Rancho del Campo de los Franceses of about 48,000 acres. Weber later bought out Gulnac for $200 and started the settlement of Slough Town later renamed Tuleburg.
During the Mexican-American war the Mexicans imprisoned Weber for refusing to raise arms against the Americans. Commodore Robert F. Stockton the American military commander of California rescued him. In gratitude Weber renamed his settlement Stockton which name it still bears today. The Steamer John A. Sutter was the first power boat to arrive in Stockton on November 1849.
On June 16, 1846 the settlers in California under the command of John Fremont declared independence from Mexico and created the Bear Flag Republic. On July 11, 1846 Paul Revere’s nephew Lieutenant Joseph Revere sent a United States flag to Sutter and the U.S. annexed California under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which included paying Mexico a cash payment of $15,000,000 and the United States assuming claims of American citizens against Mexico of $3,250,000. This ended Mexico’s 21 year control of California. On September 9, 1850, by act of congress California became the 31st state in the Union.
Gold!
Sutter's Mill - Photo courtesy of Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation and Enforcement
In January of 1848 James Marshall found gold at Sutter’s sawmill on the American River at Coloma and the news quickly spread to San Francisco in spite of Sutter’s attempt to keep the discovery secret. The first known newspaper account was on March 15, 1848 in The Californian in San Francisco and from then on the population of Northern California grew exponentially.
Sam Brannan seized the opportunity and opened a store selling mining supplies. Sam is credited with founding the city of Sacramento and was rumored to have been seen running through the streets of San Francisco yelling “gold has been discovered in the Sierras!” Brannan was reported as California’s first millionaire. John Sutter later in 1848 said:”Every little shanty in or around the Fort became a store, a warehouse or a hotel, the whole settlement was a veritable bazaar.”
Captain William Warner and Lieutenant William T. Sherman (later as General Sherman of Civil War fame) surveyed the area between Sutter’s Fort and the Embarcadero along the Sacramento River laying out the first grid of the city that would be known as “Sacramento City”. Sam Brannan claimed credit for the name. From Sherman’s memoirs: “ Having finished our work on the Cosumnes, we proceeded to Sacramento, where Captain Sutter employed us to connect the survey of Sacramento City, made by Lieutenant Warner, and that of Sutterville, three miles below, which was then being surveyed by Lieutenant J. W. Davidson, of the First Dragoons. At Sutterville, the plateau of the Sacramento approached quite near the river, and it would have made a better site for a town than the low, submerged land where the city now stands; but it seems to be a law of growth that all natural advantages are disregarded wherever once business chooses a location. Old Sutter’s embarcadero became Sacramento City, simply because it was the first point used for unloading boats for Sutter’s Fort”
Originally the San Joaquin had a myriad of turns and bends and plans to straighten it were formulated in the 1870’s. The project was finished in the 1930’s by cutting through numerous islands and dredging the channel to 26 feet. This one project created many new islands and meandering waterways that are still in existence today.
John Bidwell had a 17,700 acre land grant along the Sacramento River starting in 1844 that included the area that now is the City of Rio Vista. In 1848 at the beginning of the gold rush a wharf was built to handle the steamer traffic. N.H. Davis purchased the town site from Bidwell in 1855 and by 1860 the town was called Rio Vista. The great storm of 1861 washed the town away and it was later rebuilt on higher ground where it remains today. The channel of the Sacramento river originally went through horseshoe bend to the east of Decker Island just downstream from Rio Vista but a cut was made and the channel moved to its present location in 1918 creating Decker Island.
Up until the rivers were silted in by hydraulic mining in the 1870’s steamers could make it all the way up the Sacramento to Red Bluff and up the Feather River as far as Yuba City. On the San Joaquin steamers made it as far as Firebaugh near Fresno. There are even records of steamboats going as far as Coloma (!) on the American River. The hydraulic mining caused terrible silting of the rivers, which is still a major problem today. The Yuba river near Marysville went from a “fish filled 30-foot (deep) water” in 1850 to where “the river was almost level with Marysville streets” in 1878 according to Marysville mayor at that time C.E. Stone. The Briggs orchard near Marysville was covered with 20 feet of silt. In one year in the 1870’s “46 Million cubic yards of gravel, a mass a mile wide and a mile long and fifteen yards deep had been hurled into the streams or spread over the farm lands”. Over a thirty year period two billion cubic yards of debris filled the Sacramento River and its tributaries.
The gold rush brought hoards of people to Northern California. Some came overland but many came by sea. As of March of 1850 Sacramento City had thirty stores, six saloons, and many other business establishments. By 1855 Sacramento produced $300,000 worth of manufactured items per month.
The name of the settlement of Yerba Buena was changed to San Francisco in 1847. The original settlement was started at Yerba Buena Cove but as the population and area expanded a new name was thought to be in order. Gold captivated most people until about 1860 at which time agriculture was rediscovered. The original farmers were called rimlanders because they farmed on the edges of the Delta before the islands had been surrounded with levees and reclaimed.
Source:
Bill Wells
Executive Director
California Delta Chambers & Visitor’s Bureau
PO Box 1118
Rio Vista, CA 94571
Hernando Cortez with his Indian allies seized Mexico in 1519, and in 1521 two of his soldiers deserted and headed north to Alta California possibly because of rumors of great wealth to be found there. Legend has it that these two were the first Europeans to visit the Great Valley and to view the Sacramento River. In April of 1879 two miners cutting down an old oak near the Middle Fork of the Feather River found an old manuscript buried inside the tree. Ten years later in 1889 the miners showed it to a Spanish speaker and the manuscript was translated as the story of the two. It was shipped to the Naval Museum in Madrid but apparently lost and as of yet has not resurfaced.
A Portuguese, Joao Rodriquez Cabrilho is probably the first European to venture up the California coast and in 1542 discovered San Diego Bay and sailed as far North as Monterey Bay before turning back and dying in an accident at San Miguel Island early in 1543. The Spanish possibly still smarting that Columbus was Italian corrupted his name to Juan Cabrillo.
Francis Drake was possibly the first European to enter San Francisco Bay and anchored near what is now San Quentin prison in 1579. (This is in dispute and some say he actually anchored in Drake’s Bay or Bodega Bay or even farther North). In the 1930’s a brass plaque was discovered near San Quentin purportedly left there by Drake, in the 1990’s it was exposed as a fake. The description later narratives left of the Indian culture Drake and his crew spent five weeks with is convincingly Coastal Maidu. The Coastal Maidu inhabited the area from Duncan’s Point on the North Coast to the Northern side of the Golden Gate and included Bodega Bay, Drake’s Bay, and the North Bay area of Sausalito, San Rafael, Petaluma, and Cotati.
Why a trip to the California Delta? Well last summer Judy and I were at “the Taste of the Delta”, food, wine and vendors all together in a one day festival. At the conclusion of the event there was a raffle, and we actually won! It was a two night stay at the Delta’s Dockside Boatel, along with two massage treatments. So we finally got around to scheduling the trip last week. After a day exploring the area on the way from Sacramento down Hwy 160 from Sacramento, and only getting lost only a time or two, following the “Delta Loop” near the intersection of Hwy 160 and Hwy 12, we arrived at our destination.
Called the “Easy Breezy” she is a 40’ Bluewater yacht, which remains dockside as a “boatel”. If you had a boat you could come in to the “boatel” from Stockton, Oakland or Sacramento, as there is plenty of tie-down space (up to 22 feet) on the same dock. It is located on the calm Georgiana Slough of the Mokelumne River. But, since we were driving, we came on board from the land. It is a very open floor plan, sleeping at least 6 or 7, and the two of us had lots of space. There is a full galley, the head and private stateroom below, a spacious cockpit, and fly bridge sundeck above. A great breakfast was included, both days, and the rest of the time we just sat and watched the world go by (a few boats), and lots of birds, fish and insects. Water, water everywhere, all very calming and relaxing. If you are interested in trying the “Easy Breezy” yourself, call Sue at (510) 919-2197.
Looking at the Delta from the sun deck of the "Easy Breezy"
Oh and we highly recommend the massage treatment too – just a few miles away in Isleton, with Pam Roum Certified Massage Therapist, (cell 209-366-4474) was wonderful. An interesting note is that Pam is also certified to do equine massage, if your horse is also in need of some relaxation! Isleton is a cute town too and we ate at Rogelio’s the Chinese – Mexican – American – Seafood – Italian restaurant in town! If you can’t find something on that menu to please everyone in your family it will be truly remarkable, with the complexity of the menu available.
The California Delta is a unique spot, in many ways not changed from the pioneer days when gold hunters and adventurers trekked to the ports of Sacramento and Stockton via river steamers. Today instead of paddle wheelers and steamers there are thousands of pleasure boats. There is a certain remoteness to the Delta, not easy to find elsewhere. There are 55 major Islands, and 1,000 miles of navigable waterways. I am sure we would have gotten a better feel for the Delta if we had been able to rent or had a boat, but it was a great mid-week getaway all the same!
