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Rebuilding starts with tearing down slums. Long neglected, Pony Express depot will be restored.
State office building is a sample of what will replace crumbling structures in blighted area.
Oacramento, a headquarters for miners during the wild
and woolly days of the California gold rush, is rebuilding its
historic "West End."
West End was where the gold miners collected their grub
stakes and celebrated their strikes, where mule pack trains
set off with supplies for miners as far away as Idaho, where
Pony Express riders ended their weary ride from St. Joseph,
Mo., and where Capt. John A. Sutter landed on the banks of
the Sacramento river and started the gold fever.
That was more than 100 years ago. Today the West End has
become a crumbling, blighted 62-block area of flophouses,
honky-tonks, pawnshops, and overcrowded, substandard
housing units. Worse than that, the area's decay was slowly
spreading into healthy sections of Sacramento.
The city fathers decided to do something about it some
thing big. They drew up plans for a complete rehabilitation of
the area, centering on a 15-block Capitol Mall, a $10-million
project of commercial, residential, and public buildings.
Not all the romance of the gold-rush days will vanish under
the wreckers' hammers. The Pony Express office will be left
as a reminder of the city's past. Other historic landmarks also
will remain.
One of these is the home of E. B. Crocker, pioneer California
jurist and a backer of the first transcontinental railroad. Now
the Crocker Art Gallery, the building houses one of the West's
finest art collections.
More than 400 families, representing 27 nationalities, and
many businesses will be displaced, but the city has offered
financial help and advice in finding new locations. A number
of businessmen already have planned to move back into the
revitalized West End.
The work began in 1950 and may take more than a decade
to complete, but Sacramento will someday have a new "gold
rush" section of which it can be justly proud!
4 Family Weekly, July 21, 1957