|
A Sketch of Marysville's History
Paperback: 52 pages
Publisher: Self (2001)
ISBN:
None
Once called California's Third City, those who founded Marysville and
toasted the new city with french champagne in 1850, would be puzzled by
the notion that this historic gold rush town had become California's
Oldest "Little" City.
That's because  when
the town was laid out in the path of tens of thousands of gold miners
and merchants and capitalists who flocked to the region in the earliest
days of the Gold Rush, the plan was for a major metropolis. In
fact, the Kennebec Company, a group of capital investors, planned for
Marysville to grow into the "New York of the Pacific".
And for the first several months, Marysville headed in exactly that direction. At the time of its birth into a
city with a street plan and elected officials, Marysville was a tent city of 300. The population swelled to
1,500 within a month and grew somewhat steadily for several years afterward. For one brief period in 1852,
Marysville was the third largest city in all of California, after San Francisco and Sacramento. As a result of
the largest human migration in world history, Marysville absorbed 50 years of natural growth in a five-year period.
Marysville had the first municipal library and the first municipal
cemetery west of the Mississippi. The city was named after Mary Murphy
Covillaud, a Donner Party survivor of 1850. On February 5, 1851,
Marysville was officially incorporated as a California city, the eighth
city to incorporate. Stephen J. Fields became Marysville's first
"alcalde" (a Spanish word for an officer who functions as a cross
between a mayor and a judge). He later became the first United States
Supreme Court Justice from the American west.
Located at the confluence of the Yuba and Feather rivers, the city was the gateway to the Northern
Mother Lode and the terminus of steamship navigation, which originated in San Francisco. Its future
growth into one of the largest cities in the American West, it seemed, was assured.
Marysville City Historian Henry Delamere's
sketch of Marysville is a nicely written history celebrating the city's
150th year. It is told in short biographies and stories.
|
