Sacramento is the fastest-growing major city in California, owing to its status as a notable political center on the West Coast and as a major educational hub, home of California State University, Sacramento and UC Davis. In 1852, the city offered its county courthouse to the state of California to house the state legislature, resulting in the city becoming the permanent state capital in 1854 and ushering in the construction of a new state capitol building which was finished in 1874. Following the American Conquest of California and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the waterfront developed by Sutter began to be developed and incorporated in 1850 as the City of Sacramento. In 1839, Juan Bautista Alvarado, Mexican governor of Alta California, granted the responsibility of colonizing the Sacramento Valley to Swiss-born Mexican citizen John Augustus Sutter, who subsequently established Sutter's Fort and the settlement at the Rancho Nueva Helvetia.

Spanish cavalryman Gabriel Moraga surveyed and named the Río del Santísimo Sacramento ( Sacramento River) in 1808, after the Blessed Sacrament. īefore the arrival of the Spanish, the area was inhabited by the Nisenan, Maidu, and other indigenous peoples of California. Sacramento is also the cultural and economic core of the Greater Sacramento area, which at the 2020 census had a population of 2,680,831, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in California. Sacramento is the seat of the California Legislature and the Governor of California. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 population of 524,943 makes it the fourth-most populous city in Northern California, sixth-most populous city in the state, and the ninth-most populous state capital in the United States. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. Sacramento ( Spanish for ' sacrament') ( / ˌ s æ k r ə ˈ m ɛ n t oʊ/ SAK-rə- MEN-toh Spanish: ) is the capital city of the U.S.

Sacramento california map