Curious about Sacramento history? This archives crawl is for you
The historic Gold Rush settlement of Norristown located around where Sac State’s campus is today, is almost entirely forgotten.
“There are a couple of little glitches where you can still see Norristown, for example the corner of 63rd and Elvas,” said Andy McLeod, co-author with Eric Webb, James C. Scott and Special Collections Of The Sacramento Public Library of the book, “Lost Gold Rush Towns of Sacramento.”
He added, “You really have to know where to look.”
Those who attend a talk that McLeod and Webb are giving 1 p.m. Saturday at the Central Library Galleria will get a better idea. The talk is just one stop on the 2025 Archives Crawl, which also includes the Center for Sacramento History, California State Archives and California State Library.
Free to the public — with any order people want to do the crawl in also fine — the stops cover different facets of state and local history. There isn’t a unified theme. “We just let everyone shine in the way that they want to,” said Sabrina Holecko, an archivist for the Center for Sacramento History.
At the center on Thursday morning, staff expounded about their tribute as part of the crawl to the former Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, once a marquee event locally that ended in 2017.
Kim Hayden, an archivist for the center said that she’d recently finished processing the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society’s archival collection. “After finishing it, it just had so many great photos and artifacts,” Hayden said. “We thought it would be a good idea to do an exhibit on it.”
The exhibit isn’t just photos of people playing music. There are nods to the unexpected people who factored into Sacramento’s jazz scene, such as Sherwood Johnson, founder of Shakey’s Pizza, which not only launched from Sacramento to become an international restaurant chain but also hosted jazz locally.
At Central Library the crawl will also feature the Sacramento Room.
The California State Archives will feature exhibits all day during the Archives Crawl, with tours at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., to commemorate the 175th anniversary of California becoming a state. A website for the crawl said the exhibit will feature records on the history of the archives. Admission to the California Museum is also free as part of the crawl.
Meanwhile, there will be tours of the California State Library at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. for the crawl. Things to see include the Frank Van Sloan mural from 1929, “The War Through the Ages” and photos from Johnny Cash’s concerts at San Quentin and Folsom prisons.
McLeod said the Archives Crawl is “such a great event.”
“You get to really see the nuts and bolts of the work of making the resources available,” McLeod said.
If you go…
What: 2025 Archives Crawl
Where: Central Library, Center for Sacramento History, California State Archives, California State Library
When: Oct. 4, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Cost: Free
More information: https://www.sacramentoarchivescrawl.com/crawl-2025
This story was originally published October 2, 2025 at 3:06 PM.
