Bird’s-Eye View of the City of Sacramento, State Capital of California — 1870

Cartographer: Drawn by Augustus Koch; lithographed by Britton & Rey, San Francisco

Year: 1870

Koch’s sweeping perspective looks southeast from above the American River, portraying Sacramento two years after completion of the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific’s riverfront yards dominate the left foreground, with roundhouse smoke and switching tracks curving toward the track-filled “Machine Shop Yards.” Stern-wheel steamers, barges, and wharf cranes line the Sacramento River levee, underscoring the city’s dual rail-and-river freight role. A perfectly rectilinear street grid stretches toward the distant Sutter Sloughs, punctuated by tree-lined squares and the partially built second State Capitol rising at 10th and L Streets. Beyond the town, orchards, levee roads, and reclaimed tule marshes foreshadow the agricultural expansion of the 1870s. Numbered keys below the view identify 36 landmarks—hotels, churches, schools, depots, and flour mills—offering historians a precise inventory of post-flood, early-rail Sacramento.