Lauren Nelson/Daily Forty-Niner
Old Town Sacramento gives visitors a glimpse of what Sacramento looked like during Gold Rush times.
By Lauren Nelson
Daily Forty-Niner
Politics and scandals, the state capital and new home of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, are only some of the things that make this Northern California city unique. Hidden in Sacramento is Old Town, where visitors can ride a horse and buggy from one novelty shop to another. Right next to Old Town is the Sacramento River that is used year-round by fishermen and boaters. Along the river are small towns, often mistaken for ghost towns, which mask a life more laid back than the lives of southern California surfers.
Centered between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, Sacramento’s Old Town offers visitors a taste of the Wild West. Cowboy and American Indian stores line the streets paved with vintage brick and the sidewalks are still intact with the original wood panels and wooden banisters. A Peruvian store, jewelry shops of all kinds, soda shops, a Hollywood novelty store, a hemp store and eateries from bars to gourmet restaurants make up the unique district.
Evangeline’s, one of the reasons that locals go to Old Town, is a store filled with fun odds-and-ends for anyone who wants the hard-to-find, hard to think of items. With its new age atmosphere at one end of the store and a practical joke section, Evangeline’s is the place to buy all the things you really don’t need, like rubber chickens, hilarious bumper stickers, body piercing jewelry and pink flamingos for the lawn. There is an off-limits room for people who are under 18 that is always full of interested shoppers.
Thursday night at Old Town also brings the Sacramento community together for a movie on the grass. Families, couples and students finishing up their shopping at the nearby mall gather on the grass with blankets and kettle-corn to watch movies featured on the wall of an old brick building.
The Sacramento River helps provide for families. It is not only fun for jet skiers and fishers; it is also a source of life to the agriculture community that runs along the river. On top of the shore’s banks is Highway 160 that overlooks into the cropped fields of fruits and vegetables that help feed the rest of the state.
Mile-after-mile of pear trees is the town of Courtland, home of the annual Pear Festival. Hood is also on the river with its single hardware store, two liquor stores and a bait shop.
The town of Locke, with its ghost-town feeling, is the last authentic Chinese old town in the country that is as large as a single street block. Unlike other China Towns nationwide, Locke was built for Chinese immigrants. At night the only building with life in it is Al the Wops, an Italian restaurant where getting peanut butter and jelly on your steak is recommended.
Though buildings are leaning sideways and some windows are completely dark, Locke still gets business from people who somehow hear about the hidden street that is hard to find behind the trees and abandoned shacks. A Chinese medicine shop, a Chinese art gallery, a bookstore and an Oriental clothing store are owned by locals whose families opened the business after moving from China to Locke. There is also an authentic Chinese restaurant and museum that you are lucky to find open.
The Sacramento Valley is a treasure that Southern California may not know about, and that locals may not realize. The community is as diverse as the things that make it unique — government, farmers and fishermen, the city and the towns kept alive by agriculture and an important past.
