The last time Cyndy and I were in Sacramento, we decided we had to return for more history lessons and unique fun.

I suggested, to learn more about our State's Capitol, she needed to go underneath it. So off we went to explore the excavated foundations and enclosed pathways hidden since Sacramento raised its streets over 150 years ago.
This was my second such excursion, and ironically it was with the same tour guide, portraying Lavinia Waterhouse. Mrs. Waterhouse (1809-1890) lives at the intersection of a tangle of ideas that, to the 21st Century mind, have no business being together.  She was a physician practicing in the midst of California’s Gold Rush who was also a Spiritualist who was also a poet and artist who was also a leading suffragist who was also a businesswoman (at least during the rare intervals when Sacramento managed to not be critically flooded or on fire).  That combination of hard-nosed practicality and artistic whimsy, baffling to us, formed a cohesive and sensible whole in the Nineteenth Century, each part reinforcing the others in subtle ways that could never happen again. Great history is found in the most interesting of characters.
We entered this building to learn how  Sacramento lifted itself up out of the flood waters during the 1860s and 1870s!
As example of what was involved is the St. George Hotel, which was raised in 1866.Two hundred and fifty jackscrews were put into place under that job in early August (a $7,450 contract). By October, the whole job was finished; 160 feet by 76 feet, weighing about 1,900 tons, the building had been raised 8 feet (with very little damage inside and out). All of this integrated construction, to raise the city in order to achieve flood protection, took several years and during those years, the streets were a perilous obstacle course for pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. Even today, the dangers of Sacramento’s underground are still visible even if the surface barriers have been gone for more than a century.
Below, the memories of those early days remain... sharing with us buried stories of characters and their history. It was a very interesting tour.

What brought us back to town, this weekend was the 2017 Lantern Tours of the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery presented by the Old City Cemetery Committee. This was a fundraiser and my first foray into a cemetery at night... wild stuff and very cool indeed.


We joined 20 enthusiastic others on a lantern-led tour through Sacramento’s past. We met some of the cemetery’s eternal residents who shared their stories of adventure and misadventures on the water, across the prairies, on trains and through Gold Rush streets.

Along the way we encountered some ghostly (or is it ghastly?) spirits.
My favorite performance was by Rachelle Weed, who portrayed a teacher on a cross-country train trip, who when she left her seat, a little girl sat down in it. Moments later, a gun fired and it was found that the little girl had been shot and killed, accidentally, by a man who had laid his gun on a shelf in the bathroom. Wracked with guilt for having left her seat, the teacher had gone mad by the time she reached Reno. Rachelle had mad down really well....spooky.