In the year 1839, while California was still a part of the Mexican Republic, there appeared before the Governor at Monterey, a man named Johann August Sutter, asking for a grant of land on which he proposed to found a colony. Though born in Baden, Germany, his parents were Swiss, and when a young man he served as captain in the Swiss army, and later was in business, but failed. He then came to America, and crossing to the Pacific Coast on the Oregon trail, he rambled about the Northwest, went to Honolulu, and finally landed at Yerba Buena (San Francisco), going from there to Monterey. Governor Alvarado, in answer to his request for a grant of land, told him that he must first become a citizen of Mexico, then select the land for which he wished a grant, and come back to him in a year, when perhaps his naturalization papers would be issued, and a grant of the land given him. Sutter acted as directed, and was not only made a Mexican citizen and given a grant of the land he had selected but was also made an official of the government, an alcalde (mayor with judicial powers), with jurisdiction over a territory running eighty-five miles northward along the Sacramento river from near the place where the American river joins it, and eastward from the Sacramento a distance varying from ten to twelve miles, Sutter’s grant being eleven square leagues (48,000 acres) within that territory. Having previously selected his location, he at once began to build a fort with adobe brick (bricks of sun dried clay), with walls three feet thick and eighteen feet high, enclosing a space five hundred feet long, by a hundred feet wide. The walls were pierced at suitable places with loopholes for muskets, and at the southeast and northwest corners of the enclosure were towers or bastions in which small cannon were mounted, so that they commanded the four sides of the enclosure. In this fort Sutter’s house, together with quarters for his people, and all necessary storehouses and workshops were located. The fort stood on high ground, on the south bank of the American river, about a quarter of a mile from the water’s edge, and about a mile from the Sacramento river. His original company of colonists consisted of five white men, ten Indians, two of whom were squaws, and a large bulldog. That Captain Sutter chose his location wisely was strongly confirmed in 1854, when the site of his fort was chosen as the capital of the newly organized State of California; and now the great city of Sacramento, with its population of 75,000, has risen on the place of his selection. He named the place New Helvetta, to remind him of his native Switzerland; but somehow that name did not stick, and it was popularly known as Sutter’s Fort, the site of which has long since been absorbed by the great city. But the grateful citizens of Sacramento have preserved and restored the ruins of the old fort in one of their parks, so that its memory may be forever cherished.