Gold was found on John Sutter's land in 1848, his son built Sacramento on it against his wishes, and he died in a Washington hotel waiting for Congress to pay him

In May 1834 Johann August Sutter left his wife and five children in Burgdorf, Switzerland, to avoid trial over debts, and sailed for New York. In California he became a Mexican citizen in 1840. On 18 June 1841 he received title to 48,827 acres and founded New Helvetia. In 1848 James Marshall found gold at Sutter's mill at Coloma. Sutter tried to keep it quiet. Samuel Brannan spread the news, Sutter's workers left, and gold seekers overran his land. To save what he could, Sutter deeded his remaining land to his son, John Augustus Sutter Jr., who had arrived from Switzerland in September 1848. The son laid out a town by the river and named it Sacramento. The father had wanted a town named Sutterville. The squatters challenged his second grant, the Sobrante, and the courts rejected it. California paid him a pension of $250 a month. He spent his last years in the East asking Congress for redress. Congress adjourned on 16 June 1880 without passing a bill to pay him $50,000^†. He died two days later, on 18 June 1880, at Mades Hotel in Washington. He is buried in the Moravian cemetery at Lititz, Pennsylvania, though he was not a member; the congregation gave him a plot in the northwest corner. His wife, Anna, died the next January and lies with him.