Monuments to Our Ancestors

The Midwest where I grew up and started my newspaper career (Ohio and Indiana, specifically) is chock full of pioneer statues, cannons and great orators and politicians in courthouse squares. We have so little of that in the West. Most of the great statues are in old city cemeteries, or historic old squares of San Francisco and Portland.

What a pleasant surprise then this week in downtown Sacramento to find a statue of the city's founder, John Augustus Sutter.


Old John looks west toward the site of his original settlement, Sutter's Fort, and now a California State Park. It's at the corner of 28th and L streets, prominently parked at the hospital that also bears his name, Sutter General.