Former name | Sacramento History Center Discovery Museum Gold Rush History Center |
---|---|
Established | 1985 |
Location | 101 I Street, Sacramento, California, United States |
Coordinates | 38°35′05″N121°30′18″W / 38.58486°N 121.50499°W |
Type | Historical museum |
Website | sachistorymuseum |
The Sacramento History Museum is a historical museum in Sacramento, California, which interprets the history of Sacramento and the California Gold Rush. The museum is located within the Old Sacramento State Historic Park, situated along the Sacramento River between the Tower Bridge and I Street Bridge.
The museum originally opened in 1985 as the Sacramento History Center, to exhibit artifacts and records from the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center (now known as the Center for Sacramento History). In 1993, in a collaborative effort with the City of Sacramento, the Sacramento History Center and the Sacramento Science Center were combined under one entity, the Sacramento Museum of History, Science, and Technology. The Sacramento Museum of History, Science, and Technology operated two museum sites under the name "Discovery Museum." The Old Sacramento location remained dedicated to the history of Sacramento and the California Gold Rush, and was renamed the "Discovery Museum Gold Rush History Center." [1]
In July 2008, under a directive from the City of Sacramento, the partnership between the History Center and the Science Center was dissolved. The museum's name was changed to the Sacramento History Museum, as did its leadership. The museum is jointly administered by the City and County of Sacramento and the Sacramento History Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Sacramento's history. [2]
The museum building is a reproduction of Sacramento's 1854 City Hall and Waterworks building, showcased in natural brick with two stories of 14-foot double doors across the front. The museum features 7,000 square feet of display space, including a historic print shop. [3]
The original city hall was Sacramento's first municipal building. Construction on the original building began in 1853 and it was completed at a cost of $120,000 (roughly $4.8 million in 2024). It included many governmental offices, including the mayor's office, city jail, receiving hospital, and a court. City offices occupied the original structure until 1909, when they moved to an interim space before moving to the new permanent city hall in 1915. [4]
The original building was demolished in 1913, with only a small portion of the jail surviving. [5] [6]
Exhibit themes include the Gold Rush and mining, Nisenan & Maidu Indian Nations, fur trapping, agriculture, and cultural heritage. [5] Artifacts displayed in the building are often from the collection of the Center for Sacramento History, the City of Sacramento's repository for archives and museum objects. [1]
The museum features a working print shop, with historic printing presses that are still operational. In 2020, the museum closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a way to maintain engagement, the museum set up a social media account on TikTok. [7] Videos featuring volunteer Howard Hatch demonstrating how to use the printing presses became viral on social media. As of June 2024, the Sacramento History Museum's YouTube channel has over 3.24 million followers and over one billion views. [8] The museum's TikTok account also has over 2.7 million followers. [9]
The Sacramento History Alliance and the Sacramento History Museum also conduct tours of Old Sacramento. These tours include a tour of the "Old Sacramento Underground," showing how the city was raised after flooding had destroyed many buildings in the 1860s and 1870s. [10]
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat of government of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 population of 524,943 makes it the fourth-most populous city in Northern California, sixth-most populous city in the state, and the ninth-most populous state capital in the United States. Sacramento is the seat of the California Legislature and the Governor of California.
Sutter's Fort was a 19th-century agricultural and trade colony in the Mexican Alta California province. Established in 1839, the site of the fort was originally called New Helvetia by its builder John Sutter, though construction of the fort proper would not begin until 1841. The fort was the first non-indigenous community in the California Central Valley. The fort is famous for its association with the Donner Party, the California Gold Rush, and the formation of the city of Sacramento, surrounding the fort. It is notable for its proximity to the end of the California Trail and Siskiyou Trails, which it served as a waystation.
Auburn is a city in and the county seat of Placer County, California, United States. Its population was 13,776 during the 2020 census. Auburn is known for its California Gold Rush history and is registered as a California Historical Landmark.
West Sacramento is a city in Yolo County, California, United States. The city is separated from Sacramento by the Sacramento River, which also separates Sacramento and Yolo counties. It is a fast-growing community; the population was 53,915 at the 2020 census, up from 48,744 at the 2010 census. The traditional industrial center of the region since the Gold Rush era, West Sacramento is home to a diverse economy and is one of the area's top four employment centers.
Downieville is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Sierra County, California, United States. Downieville is on the North Fork of the Yuba River, at an elevation of 2,966 feet (904 m). The 2020 United States census reported Downieville's population was 290.
The golden spike is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The term last spike has been used to refer to one driven at the usually ceremonial completion of any new railroad construction projects, particularly those in which construction is undertaken from two disparate origins towards a common meeting point. The spike is now displayed in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Old Sacramento State Historic Park occupies around one third of the property within the Old Sacramento Historic District of Sacramento, California. The Old Sacramento Historic District is a U.S. National Historic Landmark District. The Historic District is sometimes abbreviated as Old Sacramento, or Old Sac, and since the 1960s has been restored and developed as a significant tourist attraction.
Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park is a state park unit preserving Malakoff Diggins, the largest hydraulic mining site in California, United States. The mine was one of several hydraulic mining sites at the center of the 1882 landmark case Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company. The mine pit and several Gold Rush-era buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Malakoff Diggins-North Bloomfield Historic District. The "canyon" is 7,000 feet (2,100 m) long, as much as 3,000 feet (910 m) wide, and nearly 600 feet (180 m) deep in places. Visitors can see huge cliffs carved by mighty streams of water, results of the mining technique of washing away entire mountains of gravel to wash out the gold. The park is 26 miles (42 km) north-east of Nevada City, California, in the Gold Rush country. The 3,143-acre (1,272 ha) park was established in 1965.
The California State Mining and Mineral Museum is a museum of the state park system of California, United States. The museum exhibits and interprets the state's mineral resources and mining heritage. It is located in Mariposa, a city in central California, on the Mariposa County fairgrounds.
Empire Mine State Historic Park is a state-protected mine and park in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Grass Valley, California, U.S. The Empire Mine is on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal Historic District, and a California Historical Landmark. Since 1975 California State Parks has administered and maintained the mine as a historic site. The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California". Between 1850 and its closure in 1956, the Empire Mine produced 5.8 million ounces of gold, extracted from 367 miles (591 km) of underground passages.
The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating from the Gold Rush to the present, European paintings and master drawings, one of the largest international ceramics collections in the U.S., and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. The Crocker Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science is a general-interest museum located on the Ohio riverfront in downtown Evansville, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1904, it is one of Southern Indiana's most established and significant cultural institutions, with comprehensive collections in art, history, anthropology and science. It has a permanent collection of over 30,000 objects including fine arts, decorative arts, historic documents and photographs, and anthropologic and natural history artifacts. Also on the museum's campus is the Evansville Museum Transportation Center, featuring Southern Indiana transportation artifacts from the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
HistoryMiami Museum, formerly known as the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, is a museum located in Downtown Miami, Florida, United States. HistoryMiami Museum is the largest history museum in the State of Florida. HistoryMiami houses four permanent galleries and up to three traveling exhibits, Archives and Research Center, the South Florida Folklife Center, the Education Center, and City Tours program.
The Capitol Mall or Capitol Mall Boulevard is a major street and landscaped parkway in the state capital city of Sacramento, California. Formerly known as M Street, it connects the city of West Sacramento in Yolo County to Downtown Sacramento. Capitol Mall begins at the eastern approach to the Tower Bridge, and runs east to Plaza de California and the California State Capitol.
The Pony Express Terminal, also known as the B. F. Hastings Bank Building, is a historic commercial building at 1000 2nd Street in Sacramento, California. Built in 1852, it was the western endpoint of the Pony Express from 1860 to 1861, the period of the service's operation. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966. It now houses a museum dedicated to the history of Wells Fargo, and is part of Old Sacramento State Historic Park, itself a National Historic Landmark District. The B. F. Hastings Bank Building is a California Historical Landmark No. 606.
The Museum of Riverside is a museum of regional history and culture, Indigenous culture, and natural history located in the historic Mission Inn District of Riverside, California, United States. The museum, formerly known as the Riverside Metropolitan Museum and Riverside Municipal Museum, is a department of the City of Riverside, but is supported by the Riverside Museum Associates (RMA) and the Harada House Foundation (HHF), two independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Its mission is: "As a center for learning, the Museum of Riverside interacts with the community to collect, preserve, explore, and interpret the cultural and natural history of Riverside and its region."
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TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app.