On February 7, 1846, William Loker, the assistant clerk at Sutter’s Fort (in present-day Midtown Sacramento), wrote in the Fort’s daily logbook, “Capt. [Lansford] Hastings & [John] Bidwell finished laying out the town.” That town was the proposed site of Sutterville. Hoping for increased immigration to the Sacramento Valley, John Sutter knew Sutter’s Fort would not be an adequate trading post to supply American immigrants with the increased demand for commercial supplies and housing. Lansford Hastings also hoped to increase American immigration to California with his newly published guidebook, “The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California.” Knowing that the area west of Sutter’s Fort flooded often during the winter, Sutterville was surveyed on a low bluff overlooking the Sacramento River, just a few miles south of Sutter’s Embarcadero (where Old Sacramento is today). To encourage German immigration to California, this proposed map of Sutterville was published in 1849 in “Neuer Prak...