Built in 1839, Sutter’s Fort was the headquarters of Swiss immigrant Johan Suter--later known as John Sutter--and his massive agricultural estate entitled “Nueva Helvecia” (New Switzerland). As the first non-Native American community in California’s Central Valley, the fort soon came to play an important role in many of California history’s most crucial events, from the Gold Rush to the Donner Party, to the founding of Sacramento, California’s eventual capital. Sutter’s farming empire, propped up by a mountain of debt and Native American slave labor, came crashing down during the latter days of the California Gold Rush, when squatters and prospectors stripped his ranching herds and fields for food, then litigated Sutter out of his Mexican land grant. Much of Sutter’s Fort slowly crumbled in the decades after, but the remainder was rescued by the Native Sons of the Golden West in the 1890s and fully restored by its centennial in 1939. Today it is a California State Park housing a vibrant museum in the heart of Sacramento.