Sutterville: The Town John Sutter Lost

Two and a quarter miles south of Sacramento, on a low hill above the river, sits the ghost of John Sutter's ambition. In eighteen forty-four, Sutter hired the writer Lansford Hastings and the frontiersman John Bidwell to help him plan a city he would call Sutterville, designed to be the commercial capital of his California domain. But the Gold Rush upended everything.

While Sutter was building Sutterville carefully on higher ground, his own son John Junior began selling lots at Sutter's embarcadero to the north and named the place Sacramento City. Gold seekers flooded in and chose the closer landing. Sutter watched Sutterville wither as Sacramento boomed, and the change of plans strained his relationship with his son.

The hill is still there. The city is not.