Sacramento History Photo(s) of the Week: Issue No. 20!

In August 1903, Edward and Augusta Sullivan gave birth to a child at 1100 “E” Street, deciding to name her Helen. Above is Helen Sullivan in her 1922 graduation photo from Sacramento High School. Following school, she spent the next ten years working as a telephone operator and stenographer for the State of California, and was married in 1933 to Tipton Randolph. Helen lived at both 1100 and 1110 at different times from birth through her late-20s.

Helen’s father, Edward, was a blacksmith for Southern Pacific. Her grandmother and grandfather, Peter and Mary, moved to Sacramento from New York state. All of the Sullivan boys, a total of three, and the senior Sullivan, worked for the railroad. Edward and Peter died within five months of one another in 1915, Edward of typhoid fever in August and Peter of a stroke in April. Both are buried at the Old City Cemetery. Etched on Edward’s grave is the word “Papa.”

Helen spent her latter years living in East Sacramento after residing for nearly two decades just outside the Alkali at Seventeenth and “G.” She died in May 1990.

This photo and many more like it can be found in the Sacramento Public Library’s Sacramento Room which is open to the public Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday 1 to 5, and Thursday 1 to 8.

Sacramento History Photo of the Week: Issue No. 18!

Serious but beguiling eyes look toward the camera in this 1914 photo from McKinley School at Seventh and “G.” The school replaced the venerable Union School which was closed down just a decade earlier. With the growth of industry within and around the Alkali in the teens and twenties, the school’s enrollment, by 1921, swelled to being one of the largest in the city at nearly 700 pupils, necessitating the annexation of the old Southern Pacific Hospital and Crocker home as a playground, clubhouse and “amusement building.” However, with the deepening economic depression, Southern Pacific Company’s purchase of residential units to the west of the school, the closing of a nearby cannery, and the allure of nearby St. Joseph’s School, by 1932, numbers had dropped to 306 and the school had been abandoned as a teaching place, saving the school district $16,000, annually.

This photo and many more like it can be found in the Sacramento Public Library’s Sacramento Room which is open to the public Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday 1 to 5, and Thursday 1 to 8.

Sacramento History Photo of the Week: Issue No. 1

Starting this week, we will be bringing to you historic photos from Sacramento's historic past that either come from the Sacramento Public Library's Sacramento Room collection or can be accessed through any of our many city/county branches. Along with the photo itself, we hope to provide thoughtful description and discussion on the photo's content and context. Here's today's photo, coming to us from the Library of Congress:


This is a rare, rare photo of China Slough, aka Sutter Slough or most elegantly Sutter Lake, circa 1866. Depending on the extent of seasonal flooding (and it's very high in this photo), the slough lapped upon the western-most boundary of Alkali Flat at 6th or 7th Streets. The oils and solvents of Southern Pacific/Central Pacific Railroad, not to mention the sewage and garbage of the residential community along lower “I,” made the slough both unpleasant to look at and notoriously odorous, prompting the City to plant some 3,000 eucalyptus trees along its banks in 1876/77.

The slough was finally filled in 1910 as part a deal between Southern Pacific and the City: the railroad fills the slough, it gets the land. This view from the Pioneer Flour Mills (located on the eastern bank of the Sacrament River) looks east toward Alkali Flat; the white structure near the upper, left-hand section of the photo is the Ohio Brewery, the spire in the middle, upper section of the photo is the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the far-right structure is the Grace Church.

What had sat as a pristine inlet of the Sacramento River as late as 1849 had, in a short 15 years, become something that most Sacramentans just wanted to forget about. Amazingly enough, as I look out the 5th floor window at Central Library, I'm not sure I feel too differently as I look at the big SP sandbox to the northwest.

The persistent url for the photo is as follows: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a08746