Sutter Basin Company Records, 1910-1974

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Summary

Creators:
Sutter Basin Company
Abstract:
The Sutter Basin Company Records document the draining of 45,000 acres of land along the Sacramento River near Robbins, California, and the subsequent use of the land for farming. The collection includes letters and telegrams from Chicago to Sacramento on all facets of the company, including financing, land sales data, crop data, test gardens, artifacts, maps, blueprints, and ledgers. The collection also includes two boxes of realia.
Extent:
215 linear feet
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

Sutter Basin Company Records, D-491, Department of Special Collections, General Library, University of California, Davis.

Background

Scope and content:

The Sutter Basin Company Records document the draining of the Sacramento River flood plain near Robbins, California, and the subsequent use of the land for farming. The collection includes letters and telegrams from Chicago to Sacramento on all facets of the company, including financing, land sales data, crop data, test gardens, artifacts, maps, blueprints, and ledgers. The collection also includes two boxes of realia.

Biographical / historical:

The Sutter Basin Company was founded in 1911 with the aim of developing 45,000 acres of land along the Sacramento River in Sutter County. With funding from Chicago meat packer J. Ogden Armour, a group of businessmen in Sacramento lobbied the state and federal governments to create Reclamation District #1500. The project raised levees on portions of the Sacramento river, constructed the Sutter Bypass, and developmed irrigation canals to re-route the flood waters. Prospective buyers started arriving in 1920 and the Sutter Basin Company continued selling parcels of land until 1946.

Source:

Unpublished history by Janet Alonso, Robbins, California

Acquisition information:
Gift of Mohammad A. Gorsi, Janet Alonso, and Steven T. Butler, 2008.
Processing information:

Due to the size of the collection and the unclear original order of the records, this collection is arranged by material type and chronologically by year. Manuscript Archivist Liz Phillips processed this collection and created and encoded the finding aid with assistance from student employees Alex Dao and Kelley Liang.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in four series: 1. Records; 2. Ledgers; 3. Maps; 4. Realia.

Physical location:
Researchers should contact Special Collections to request collections, as many are stored offsite.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

Copyright is protected by the copyright law, chapter 17 of the U.S. Code. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publications is given on behalf of Special Collections, General Library, University of California, Davis as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

Preferred citation:

Sutter Basin Company Records, D-491, Department of Special Collections, General Library, University of California, Davis.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Davis, Special Collections, UC Davis Library
100 NW Quad
Davis, CA 95616-5292, US
Contact:
(530) 752-1621
speccoll@ucdavis.edu
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