Sacramento: Museum for the State : Capitol and the City Are Full of Historic Sites, Tales

The telegram from the President was lying on the governor’s desk, its message a brief query:

“Hear rumors of great disaster through an earthquake in San Francisco, but know nothing of the real facts. Call upon me for any assistance I can render.”

The wire was signed Theodore Roosevelt and was delivered to California Gov. George Pardee five hours after an earthquake rocked San Francisco at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906.

The office Pardee occupied then is one of seven rooms on the main floor of the rotunda in the Capitol that have been re-created to appear as they did at the turn of the century--part of a $68-million Capitol restoration project that was completed in 1982.

Attracted by the restorations and other historic memorabilia, thousands of visitors tour the Capitol and its grounds each year. They have their choice of several tours which are escorted by a staff of 27 guides and about 125 volunteers.

Other Re-Created Offices

In addition to the governor’s three-room suite, other re-created offices in the State Capitol Museum are those of then-Secretary of State Charles F. Curry, the attorney general’s office and two offices of the state treasurer--one as it would have looked in 1906, the other done in the style of the 1930s.

Capitol museum director David Vincent, 38, pointed to a map lying on the governor’s desk. “This is San Francisco,” he said. “As reports of the great earthquake and fire were phoned from Oakland, an aide would mark off the areas that had been destroyed. What we wanted to portray (in the restoration) was how the governor’s office responded to the disaster.”

In fact, according to Vincent, response was immediate and effective. The Legislature was called into session, and the governor left for San Francisco.

San Francisco was a city in chaos. Times readers learned of the magnitude of the quake as the first accounts were telegraphed from Oakland by the Associated Press:

“During six hours of mortal dread and nameless terror, San Francisco was today tossed upon the seismic wave of the most disastrous earthquake known to the history or traditions of America’s West Coast. In the mad confusion and helpless horror of this night uncounted bodies of dead men and women are lying in morgues and under uplifted walls. . . . Fire and flame have added to the destruction, the ruination and despair. The material losses are beyond computation. Wounded and hurt inexpressibly, the chief city of the West lies at this hour humbled to the dust, blackened, battered and charred, her glory of yesterday but a hideous dream, and the moans from her stricken heart filling the pitying world. . . .”

In a brief telegram back to an assemblyman in Sacramento, Pardee declared: “San Francisco needs help.”

Aid Comes Quickly

The Army emptied its storage facilities of food, tents, blankets, medical supplies and even hay for horses. Hundreds of tons of relief supplies were sent from cities throughout the nation, and long lines of Southern Pacific freight cars filled with donated food, clothing, bedding and other goods formed a procession of trains leaving Los Angeles daily for the northern city.

On April 22, the governor commented to a reporter from the Oakland Tribune: “The nation and the world is taking a great interest in our welfare and is showing material and financial aid. . . . The work of rebuilding San Francisco has commenced and I expect to see the great metropolis replaced on a much grander scale than ever before.”

Vincent opened a door leading to a restored office once occupied by the state’s treasurer. The ornate safe so popular with visitors “was used to store the taxes that were collected, and they were in gold coin,” he said. “The standard denomination used was the $20 double eagle . . . generaly delivered in sacks which held $20,000 worth. One weighed 73 pounds. You see movies where highwaymen hold up stages or trains and go riding off carrying these bags. Why you couldn’t get one of them on a horse.”

While the emphasis on Capitol tours is on the building itself, there is one room with exhibits that cover California’s history. Secretary of State March Fong Eu, who in addition to her other duties is responsible for the state’s archives, changing various historical documents in the display cases. Other material on view is on loan from the State Library.

Visitors to the Capitol usually look up other historic sites in Sacramento, a city which represents a kind of a museum-at-large of California history dating back to the Mexican period. For example, Ft. John Sutter, constructed in 1839, was a welcome sight to weary American emigrants who had struggled to bring their wagons across the Sierra. Reconstructed at 27th and L streets, it’s a popular attraction for many tourists.

With the discovery of gold in 1848, Sacramento became the staging area for thousands who flocked to the Mother Lode that extended from Downieville on the Yuba River south to Mariposa in the foothills of the Sierra. They paused here, for example, to purchase mining supplies. Soon-to-be rail magnates Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins operated a hardware store where they are said to have cornered the market on shovels.

Authentic Reconstruction

Today, the Old Sacramento Historic Area along the levee of the Sacramento River, which includes Huntington and Hopkins’ store, is an authentic reconstruction of the town during the period from 1849-1870.

A marker at 2nd and J streets designates the spot where Johnny Frey galloped off on the first leg of a relay of horses called the Pony Express. The date was April 3, 1860, and for $5 per half-ounce one could send a letter over the 1,980-mile route to the eastern terminus at St. Joseph, Mo. The price was later dropped to $1. The average time was eight days, and each swift pony could carry 20 pounds of mail.

Perhaps the most significant event in California’s history occurred in Sacramento on a January day in 1863 when the Central Pacific Railroad--later the Southern Pacific--began laying its rails east across the Sierra to join with Union Pacific building from the east at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. This marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

Leland Stanford, one of Central Pacific’s owners and then governor, gave a stirring speech before taking a shovel and turning the earth for the railroad’s embankment, declaring: “Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, wealth and population will feel its influence, and will commence with it a new era of progress. . . .”

Today the California State Railroad Museum occupies the land along the Sacramento River where Central Pacific put down the first rail in 1863. Opened in 1981, it is considered to have one of the world’s finest collections of railroad memorabilia, including vintage locomotives and rolling stock polished to such a high luster they appear to have just rolled out of their manufacturers’ yards.

At the end of a day of sightseeing in and around the Capitol, a visitor might end up back at the Capitol grounds. If so, he or she may be puzzled by a grove of lofty trees with identification markers nailed to each: Willow Oak, Antietam, Md. 9-16-1862; White Oak, Vicksburg, Miss. 7-14-1863; . . . .

The inscription on a large granite marker within the grove reads:

“This grove of trees as saplings, transplanted from Southern battlefields was dedicated to the memory of Union Veterans of the Civil War and presented to the State of California by the ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic of California and Nevada.”

Few who wander through this shady arbor are aware of the 500 men who went east to take part in some of the bloodiest fighting of the four-year conflict. Following the firing on Ft. Sumter and the outbreak of hostilities in April, 1861, the Legislature adopted a resolution supporting the federal government, although there were many Southern sympathizers in the state.

Volunteers were mustered into federal service, and training camps were established at various posts including San Francisco, Stockton, Sacramento and Wilmington. But the California Volunteers spent the war years generally relegated to the boredom of routine garrison life, usually in isolated desert regions of Arizona and New Mexico. An occasional patrol against unruly Indians relieved the monotony.

The prospect of such dull soldiering did not appeal to the more adventurous. Charles Roberts was one. He kept a diary of his experiences, a small, well-worn, leather-covered journal that he carried in his saddlebags while his regiment was hunting elusive bands of John Singleton Mosby’s Confederate guerrillas in Virginia. The diary is in the Huntington Library. On April 9, 1863, he made one of his first entries: “Have concluded to go and join my comrades in battling for our country. . . .”

Massachusetts was paying large bounties for volunteers. A plan was devised and approved by the governor of that state to pay the bounties to volunteers from California. One hundred men were quickly enlisted at San Francisco, boarding a steamer for a voyage to Boston the following day. Upon arrival, the company went into training designated as Company A of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry.

The recruiting plan was so successful that four more companies of 100 men each were raised, forming a battalion in the 2nd Massachusetts regiment. The Californians rode into battle carrying their own guidon with a bear painted on the fabric, and two battle flags where each encounter with the enemy was inscribed. For many years, these tattered pennants were on display in the Capitol rotunda, but as the writing has faded, they are shown only at brief intervals to preserve them.

The various trees in the grove are from some of the sites where they clashed with the Confederates along the long march to Appomattox Court House where Lee surrendered to Grant.

The trees that now stand so tall on the grounds of the Capitol had been sent to California as small saplings in 1897 by the people of the South to demonstrate that the bitterness that had once divided the nation no longer existed; the war wounds had healed.