New Helvetia, meaning New Switzerland, was the colonial project of the Swiss-born John Sutter. In 1839 the Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado gave him responsibility for colonizing the Sacramento Valley, and Sutter secured a land grant of about 50,000 acres in the Central Valley.
Sutter’s party landed on the bank of the American River in August 1839. The grant, called Rancho Nueva Helvetia, gave its name to the settlement around the fort. The city of Sacramento was laid out two miles south of it in 1848, against Sutter’s own wishes.