page_title: History of Sacramento, California
section_title: World War I and the Prohibition – 1901 to 1930
hierarchical_section_title: History of Sacramento, California / World War I and the Prohibition – 1901 to 1930
caption_attribution_description: The California Governor's Mansion in Sacramento, California
context_page_description: The history of Sacramento, California, began with its founding by Samuel Brannan and John Augustus Sutter, Jr. in 1848 around an embarcadero that his father, John Sutter, Sr. constructed at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers a few years prior.
  Sacramento was named after the Sacramento River, which forms its western border. The river was named by Spanish cavalry officer Gabriel Moraga for the Santisimo Sacramento, referring to the Catholic Eucharist.
  Before the arrival of Europeans, the Nisenan branch of the Native American Maidu inhabited the Sacramento Valley area. The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore the area, and Sacramento fell into the Alta California province of New Spain when the conquistadors claimed Central America and the American Southwest for the Spanish Empire. The area was deemed unfit for colonization by a number of explorers and as a result remained relatively untouched by the Europeans who claimed the region, excepting early 19th Century coastal settlements north of San Francisco Bay which constituted the southernmost Russian colony in North America and were spread over an area stretching from Point Arena to Tomales Bay.
context_section_description: The automobile was introduced to the city in 1900 through a local street fair; in 1903, the first car dealership opened, and the year after, twenty-seven Sacramentans owned cars. The number of automobile owners increased exponentially from that point. The advent of the automobile obsoleted careers involving horseback and overland wagon travel and decreased the importance of the steamboat and railroad industries.
  A series of Progressive Sacramentan politicians rose to key positions in the city government, implementing various methods of reform. Mayor George H. Clark, Land's successor, worked to end illicit gambling activity in the city's poolhouses; he also passed a referendum that reformed the Sacramentan charter government, equalizing the political power of each of the city's wards so as to avoid dominance in wards that hosted a rapidly growing working class population. 1907 saw a breakage in the monopoly that the Southern Pacific Railroad held over Sacramento when the second Western Pacific Railroad requested permission to construct yards in the city's vicinity, while women's rights activist L.G. Waterhouse, who headed the Sacramento Women's Suffrage Association, worked toward women's suffrage. Sacramentan women were granted the right to vote in 1911, nearly nine years prior to the passage of the nineteenth amendment that enforced this suffrage nationwide.
  At the same time, the Rancho Del Paso and Rancho San Juan Mexican land grants that encompassed much of the northern parts of the county were sold to the public; people who invested in county development would construct the settlement of Citrus Heights on the land designated as the grant; plans for communities like Orangevale, Carmichael, and Fair Oaks were set into motion to complement the city's reputation as a fruit production powerhouse. The city began to expand exponentially after the Sacramento government convinced the residents of East Sacramento and Oak Park to approve annexation. The three cities were officially joined in September 1911. The first automobile-friendly settlement to be founded was North Sacramento, which was bisected by Del Paso Boulevard.
  Nearly 4,000 troops destined for battle in Europe's First World War had come from Sacramento and other cities within the county; of those 4,000, about 100 died. The coming of the war also sparked hysteria amongst the population, biasing them against Germans and concepts associated with Germany. Sacramento's Lutheran churches began to preach in languages other than German. Additionally, a Council of Defense searched for and punished signs of disloyalty to the American cause. City tensions increased with the bombing of the governor's mansion in 1917, and suspects affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World militant party were detained and jailed, although never convicted. When the war ended in 1918, the city celebrated the return of the 363rd Infantry regiment of the 91st Division and the visit of president Woodrow Wilson, who arrived to advocate his League of Nations proposal in 1919 in the face of staunch opposition headed by Governor Johnson and Sacramento Bee editor Charles Kenny McClatchy. The coming of the 1917 American intervention in World War I exponentially increased demand for Curtiss JN-4 biplanes. A contract with the government led to the opening of Mather Air Force Base in the county, and Sacramento grew to rely on the biplanes for continued economic growth up until the end of the war. Surplus military equipment, including the biplanes, were put to use by the Sacramentan populace. In 1929, farmers in the Sacramento area experimented with crop seeding via aerial means; notably, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yatsen, with assistance from Delta farmer Jack Chew, purchased ten surplus aircraft and held sessions for maneuver practice from a local alfalfa field with local Chinese pilots. A growing civilian fascination with aviation in the era was fed by the numerous air shows that were held around the Sacramento area.
  In 1920, Sacramento adopted a new charter government that dictated the creation of 
caption: The California Governor's Mansion as seen in 1981. It was bombed in 1917.
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