Sutter’s Fort was an agricultural and trade colony in Mexican Alta California, established in 1839 as part of the colony Sutter called New Helvetia. Construction of the fort proper began in 1841. Its two-story adobe main building, built between 1841 and 1843, is the only original structure still standing at the reconstructed Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park.
The walls were two and a half feet thick and 15 to 18 feet high. The fort was the first non-Indigenous community in the Central Valley, and its labor system relied on the forced work of Indigenous people. On January 28, 1848, James Marshall showed Sutter the gold found at Sutter’s Mill four days earlier, inside the main building.
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