Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-12-27
SUFFERS FORT ONCE MORE.

Colonel Charles +. Croker has eX-
planned that it is the design of his broth
ers, sister and himself to encourage, not to
weaken, the effort to raise the needed sum
to recover the Suffer Fort tract. That is
to say, as We understand it, these generous
natives of Sacramento, whose hearts are
warm towards the city of their birth and
the State of their nativity, propose to aid
largely in the laudable end in view, and
have really guaranteed that the sum
needed shall be raised if the people will
manifest lively interest in the matter.
Wisely, they do not wish the people en-
gagged in the effort to work the restoration
of the property to understand that they
can fold their hands, and are to be de-
prived of the proud privilege of doing all
they possibly can in such splendid work.
The assurance of the restoration is a new
reason, therefore, for hard and speedy
work to raise the sum needed to make the
purchase.
Then will come the by no means simple
question of restoration and maintenance.
Just what that should be, and what its
cost, is altogether conjectural as yet. But
that it will twice exceed the cost of pur-
chase may be accepted as certainty. The
RECORD UNION has already outlined
scheme believed to be feasible. That is, to
erect over the old house now on the site an
iron and glass memorial hall large enough
TO accommodate many visitors. Within
this hall to receive and preserve all his
toric relics that may be contributed to a
California historical museum. To restore
the old walls of the fort as nearly as may
be, consistently with the lines of the
streets. To grass the grounds within the
walls, and provide for the comfort and
pleasure of visitors. To appoint custo-
dian for the place. To create fund, the
investment of which will secure sufficient
income to pay say $4,000 a year, for the
wages of the custodian and the cost of
keeping the structure in repair and the
GROUNDS III SOOu Ofuer.
Under such a system of restoration, it
will be seen that there Is ample room for
the expenditure of money, and therefore
for diligent effort to raise as much as pos
sible, that the work of restoration may be
entered upon at once, or as soon as the Pr
oneers and Native Sons shall decide what
form restoration and perpetuation shall
take. When the ground is once prepared
for visitors, we will find it will become an
object of great interest to tourists, and that
as the years recede, more and more historic
value will attach to the place. There will,
in time, be grouped the chief of the relics
of the pioneer era. The old guns that still
frown from Fremont's fort over the quiet
town of Monterey would probable be
brought to the new museum and prevented
from further decay The stone on which
the first corn and wheat were ground in
the Sacramento valley will be resurrected
from the mud of the bank of the American
river where it is now buried, and put into
prominent place in the Memorial Hall.
From all over the land the old flags and
arms of the pioneer era will be gathered;
the early books and the works OF early
California art the ough-fashioned impli-
ments of the Argonauts; the remains of
the first press on the coast; copies of the
first paper; the first book, and so on
through long and all but endless list of
relics, that to the coming generations of
California will possess as great interest as
do the rare collections of the Historical
Societies of New York, Chicago, Indiana
Maryland and other communities that
have adopted similar means of gathering
aud treasuring objects of curious and in
struetive historic value, and that mutely
tell of the era of the conquests of civiliza-
tion in its western march until it reached
the shore beyond which it cannot pass
upon American soil. Let the work of
raising the fund, therefore, go on with en-
ergy, and restoration be made realization
hafore the close of the corning vear