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Overview

Johan (John) Sutter, born in Kandern, Germany, but raised in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, worked as a shopkeeper in Burgdorf, Switzerland early in his life. He married into a wealthy family, had five children with his wife, Annette D'beld, and set about frittering away the money that he had. Submerged in debt, Sutter immigrated to the US in 1834 one step ahead of creditors and abandoning his family. He landed in New York, NY, and gradually migrated to the Old American Northwest (now the Midwest) staying briefly in Cincinnati, OH, Indiana, Saint Louis, Saint Charles, and Westport, MO. In Saint Charles, Sutter fraternized with the German-speaking immigrants there, developing a desire to strike it rich as a large-scale farmer. In order to get the money to buy his estate, he turned to trading and trapping. He twice ran a wagon train from MO to Santa Fe, NM, but later decided that the fur trade would enrich him quicker. (See Albert L. Hurtado,John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier, [Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Press, 2006], p. 20-23.)

In 1838, he accompanied an American Fur Company trapping expedition westward overland to the Hudson Bay Company's outpost, Fort Vancouver, in the Oregon Territory. From here, he meandered to the Kingdom of Hawaii, Fort Sitka, AK, Yerba Buena, CA, (what became San Francisco), and, then, in 07/1839, to Alta Californa's capital, Monterey, CA. Sutter had a dashing appearance and charismatic personality, and he quickly ingratiated himself with business and political leaders in each of the places he stopped. In Monterey, the capital of Mexico's Alta California Territory, he met the governor and declared his intention to settle in Alta California. Seeking stable settlers, the governor granted him a large, nearly 50,000-acre parcel, on which Sutter aimed to set up "New Helvetia," a settlement that grew gradually until being overwhelmed by the frenzied miners during the Gold Rush. (Helvetiabeing the female national personification of the Swiss Confederation, a name derived from an indigenous Gaulic tribe, called the Helvetii.) Sutter's Fort was the first architectural component of Sutter's planned New Helvetia.

Building History

German-born Johan Augustus Sutter (1803-1880) was an early Euro-American settler in the area surrounding Sacramento, CA. Sutter referred to himself as "Captain" John Sutter, claiming he had attained this distinguished officer's rank as part of the French monarch Louis Philippe's Gardes Suisses,although this point does not seem to have been true. Historian Albert L. Hurtado indicated that Sutter served "...as an underlieutenant in the Bernese reserve corps," but was not a member of the elite Swiss Guard. (See Albert L. Hurtado,John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier, [Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Press, 2006], p. 20.) On 06/18/1841, Sutter received a 48,827-acre portion of the gigantic Rancho Sobrante land grant from Mexico's Alta California Governor Juan Bautista Valentín Alvarado y Vallejo (1809-1882). Alvarado, Governor of Alta California from 1836-1842, gave the land to Sutter after the latter had resided on the property for one year and agreed to become a Mexican citizen. The governor wanted to increase the number of controllable, white settlers in the region, as a bulwark against incursions by the majority native peoples and by nearby American, British and Russian settlements.

Construction on Sutter's Fort began when tule huts were erected as immediate shelter by Sutter and his entourage that including several Hawaiians. In 08/1839, Sutter directed the construction of a 40-foot-long adobe dwelling, with three compartments. He shielded this three-room residence with eighteen-foot-high adobe wall, creating a fort. The walls were started in 1840 and built by Indian labor over the next two years. Military historian Justin M. Ruhge described Sutter's fortress when complete:"In 1841-42 work was continued, chiefly by Native American laborers on the Fort. The Fort was a structure of adobe with walls eighteen feet high, and three feet thick enclosing an area of 500 by 150 feet. At the southeast and northwest corners projecting bastions, or towers, rose above the walls of the rectangle and contained in their upper stories cannon, which commanded the gateways in the center of each side except the western. Loopholes were pierced in the walls at different points. Guns were mounted at the main entrance on the south and elsewhere, and the north side seemed also to be protected by a ravine. An inner wall, with the intermediate space roofed over, furnished a large number of apartments in the California style and there were other detached buildings both of wood and adobe in the interior. Some of the wooden buildings were brought from Fort Ross when it was sold to Sutter. His headquarters was in a central building, a three-story structure in the middle of the rectangle with wooden staircases at the middle on opposite sides of the building. He had quarters for some of his workers, a bakery, gristmill, blanket factory, and workshops within the Fort. He located a tannery on the American River. Dwellings for guests and his vaqueros were also outside the Fort. No more than 50 people stayed inside at any one time prior to the immigration of 1845. A maximum of 300 people could have used the Fort during the daylight but it would have been crowded. The design of Sutter's Fort seemed to be a mix of that of the Spanish presidios and Fort Ross. The corner bastions were similar to the Russian design but of adobe. The walls were of the Spanish adobe design instead of redwood as in the Russian Fort. The central building for the "management" was similar to the Russian idea although of adobe instead of redwood." (See Justin M. Ruhge, "Historic California Posts, Camps, Stations and Airfields: Sutter's Fort (Fort New Helvatia [sic], Fort Sacramento)," accessed 06/27/2016.) Sutter completed his acquisition of Fort Ross's wooden buildings in 1849, when he apparently paid the Russian-American Company $30,000 for the real estate; it is not clear exactly how much Sutter actually paid for the property.

His dreams for a stable, agricultural settlement fell apart rapidly after on 01/24/1848 when carpenter James Marshall discovered a pea-sized gold nugget near the site of a lumber mill that Sutter was financing on the American River. News of Marshall's discovery triggered one of the greatest American mass migrations of the 19th century, the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855. According to PBS's New Perspectives on the West web site, "Suddenly all of Sutter's workmen abandoned him to seek their fortune in the gold fields. Squatters swarmed over his land, destroying crops and butchering his herds. "There is a saying that men will steal everything but a milestone and a millstone," Sutter later recalled; 'They stole my millstones.' By 1852, New Helvetia had been devastated and Sutter was bankrupt. He spent the rest of his life seeking compensation for his losses from the state and federal governments, and died disappointed on a trip to Washington, D.C. in 1880." (See PBS, New Perspectives on the West, "John Augustus Sutter," accessed 06/27/2016.) Sutter's Fort began to fall into disrepair by the mid-1850s.

Building Notes

Tel: 916.445.4422 (2003)

Alteration

The fort was restored to its 1847 appearance during a fund-raising drive led by the Sutter's Fort Committee of the Native Sons of the Golden West; contributors included Mrs. Jane Stanford (1828-1905), railroad man Leland Stanford's widow, who gave funds to acquire the property around 1900.

PCAD id: 20281