David Vaught

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David Vaught | After the Gold Rush: Replicating the Rural Midwest in the Sacramento Valley | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4 | The History Cooperative

AFTER THE GOLD RUSH: REPLICATING THE RURAL MIDWEST IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY

In the 1850s and 1860s, prior to California's bonanza wheat era, a prominent agricultural community emerged along Putah Creek in the lower Sacramento Valley. This was a community of considerable stability, despite being settled by displaced 49ers—speculators, squatters, and "swamplanders"—on a fraudulent Mexican land grant. Capitalist and traditional values, imported from the Midwest, sustained them.

ON 10 APRIL 1863, A TROTTING STALLION named "Rattler" died on the ranch of Jerome C. Davis on Putah Creek in the lower Sacramento Valley. Rattler was no ordinary horse. Imported from New York in 1857 by Davis's neighbors, Fred Werner and William Montgomery, Rattler had won more races, taken more premiums, and earned more in stud fees than any horse in northern California. His record time of five minutes and twelve seconds in a two-mile heat against "Honest John" at the state fair three years earlier was already the stuff of legends—so much so that the Sacramento Daily Union ran Rattler's obituary as its feature news story on 13 April. "The death of this fine animal," the paper bemoaned, "will be regretted by turf men throughout the State." ¹

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