While exploring Sacramento’s early history, I’ve discovered a cluster of what I call anomalies. To be fair, this was a time full of inaccuracies, in which documentation was not always the best. For example, no record survives of Sacramento’s first proposed city charter, so it’s hard to say why it was initially voted down. Given the various floods and fires that struck the city, it’s not surprising that our record of events has suffered over the intervening 165 years.

Even so, there seems to be a conspicuous set of errors and omissions, which add up to make me suspicious that the historic record has suffered from active tampering to distort our understanding of what took place here.

Consider the following:

1) An elaborate 6½-page footnote in Bancroft’s History of California, which directly contradicts incorrect statements in its own error-riddled narrative.

2) A significant and apparently intentional error on a map that is misdated on its display label at the Sacramento History museum, and that seems to have been obscured for use in an 1864 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. (more soon!)

3) Numerous gaps in the card catalogs and other indexes, which collectively inhibit research into several important individuals – e.g. Dr. Charles Robinson – and organizations, and

4) A general absence of record for the People’s Market, which seems to have been a prominent enterprise on the early Sacramento waterfront. (more soon!)

My research continues, and these pages will be updated with new discoveries.