Old Sacramento on the Delta King

On Thursday, July 16th until Saturday, July 18 Frank and I took a trip to Old Sacramento to attend an evening event at the California State Railroad Museum. We stayed two nights at the nearby Delta King, a sternwheeler paddleboat, refurbished as a hotel and docked on the east side of the  Sacramento River.

Thursday Arrival and Meeting Delta King

We left Livermore mid day on a mostly northernly route that took us about 90 miles in just under two hours. We arrived around 3:00; official checkin was not until 4:00 but the clerk at the front desk (in blue) said our room was ready and let us in early. The Lobby was on Deck 3 near the stern. Our assigned room was on the river side of Deck 4. Our Room 428 (in red) was mid-ship. We climbed the outdoors stairs near the stern. We were curious to see our "stateroom". It was a bit on the small side to be associated with the grand title of a "stateroom", but it was comfortable enough with a couple quirks. The narrow doorway did not allow Frank's rollater to pass through unless collapsed into its folded position. It would not have rolled through anyway since on a ship, every doorway has a slightly raised threshold. ADH compliant it is not. Per AI investigation:

Ship doorways have raised thresholds—formally called sills or coamings—to block water, maintain structural strength, and separate safety zones. These raised barriers prevent water from rushing between compartments, allow rubber gaskets to seal tightly against flooding, and keep the ship's metal frame strong.

Since the museum event did not begin until 6:00 and would have light snacks only, our first order of business was getting dinner. We chose to dine at one of the restaurants (in green) aboard the Delta King. The Pilothouse Restaurant was on Deck 3. The metal stairs we went down at the stern were narrow and steep but there were not many of them. We found the food excellent and the view well worth the reputation. Not all views need to be for a distance. Watching the local boating and recreational activities just beyond our seat near the window was fun and enjoyable. Per the Delta King promotional materials:

The Pilothouse Restaurant is in the original grand dining room of the Delta King. With views of the Sacramento River, diners are transported back in time to the authentic glory of paddlewheel riverboats. Enjoy water views and seasonal dishes with ingredients sourced from local farms.

Across on the west bank of the Sacramento River was a display consisting of a message in a nautical alphabet but we were not knowledgable enough to interpret its meaning. I found out once back home and will explain later in this post.

 

We exited the restaurant climbing back up to the fourth deck via the grand stairway at the bow end of the boat. It was certainly more majestic than the narrow metal outdoor steps we had used to come down. Once outdoors our, stateroom was just a few doors down toward the stern.

Thursday Outing to California State Railaoad Museum
Refreshed and rejuvenated we went on to our impetus for this mini-trip. As member of the California State Railroad Museum we often receive an invitation to certain events. This time we got an email:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California State Railroad Museum & Foundation are excited to present a dynamic and fun Museum Market Mixer on Thursday evening, July 16, 2026, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Surrounded by large-scale locomotives and historic rail equipment, the mixer will take place in the Museum’s Roundhouse.

The prospect aroused our curiosity. It was an evening event so we could take our time getting to it and it was in the rail museum that Frank loves. We selected a location very close to stay overnight. Our railroad museum destination was a ¼ mile walk. First there were two blocks ~north on Front Street, parallel to the river and along railway tracks on a road that was initially cobblestones and then fine packed gravel. Neither surface was a friendly medium for Frank's rollator (roller walker). After a right turn it was only a one block distance down I Street past the Sacramento History Museum and on to the entrance of the California State Railroad Museum. The following photos show the images we passed along the way.

The Museum Market Mixer offered a variety of hand-crafted goods, gift ideas, and collectibles such as vintage items, antiques, art, prints, and more. Snacks are available for purchase, all while supporting local vendors and artisans. There were perhaps a dozen or so vendors. The  merchant from whom I bought the most was Sweethearts Shop, a local, small business that creates handmade beaded jewelry, quirky phone charms, keychains, and art prints. I bought a few items there for grandkids.

We did not ignore the edibles. Frank bought us a couple chocolate chip cookies and two waters and I bought two bags of toffee from the Valencia Toffee Company, a small, home-owned business that hand-makes traditional butter toffee, turtles, fudge, and nut clusters. The toffee flavors I selected (after sampling them all) were milk chocolate and cookies and cream. We took those bags back to our stateroom on the Delta King; they never made it to our car back to Livermore. We consumed the contents of both the two nights we were there.

After browsing the Museum Market Mixer for a little over an hour, we came back along a path parallel to Front Street, Commonwealth Alley, which, despite its "alley" title was paved... thankfully! As a bright spark of levity, we spotted this license plate on a car parked there.

Thursday Evening and Bridges
When we left the vendor mixer at the museum a little after 8:00 pm, the weather was cool, there was a slight breeze along the Sacramento River, and the sunset was starting to change to pretty golden colors. We enjoyed sitting out near the bow of the Delta King enjoying the ambience outside the Delta Bar and Grill (in green). The I Street Bridge is in the distance behind Frank looking from the bow of the boat. The second photo is a zoomed in view of the I Street bridge and the third photo is the bridge in the swing position to allow tall water traffic to pass.

The I Street Bridge is a historic metal truss double-deck swing bridge that crosses the Sacramento River to link the capital city of Sacramento, California, with Yolo County to the west.

Looking toward the stern of the boat Frank is observing Tower Bridge in the distance. Tower Bridge was California's first highway vertical lift bridge. The second photo shows the bridge in its halfway up lifted position.

Thursday night there was some activity going on Tower Bridge, with bright lights and emergency vehicles gathering there. I could gather no details that night but later researched police blotters for news of any activities that had occurred on Tower bridge July 16 at roughly 9:00 pm. I learned that emergency and rescue teams responded to a water-related safety incident downstream from the Tower Bridge in Sacramento. Since the river flows south, any downstream rescue activities would have occurred on the far side of the bridge from our view on the deck of the Delta King. After we rubber necked for a bit, Frank gathered us some ice and we cozied up into our room for the rest of the night, lying on the queen size bed, relaxing by watching some inane, unremarkable game show on a limited direct TV channel. We worked on the demise of the toffee we'd bought earlier. Tomorrow would be an unscheduled day to explore some of Old Sacramento.

Friday Touring Old Town Sacramento

In the morning we had a late breakfast in the Pilothouse Restaurant. Due to misremembering, we arrived fifteen minutes after they were closed for breakfast. They were gracious enough to seat and serve us anyway. After a rather large hearty breakfast, we went ashore on to Front Street and chose to walk the opposite direction (south) we had from the previous evening. This is the gangway we climbed to get to the street. The cobblestone of Front Street is difficult to negotiate and the corner ramps to the elevated boardwalks seemed very far between. 

We were very fortunate that the weather was warm but not insanely hot as Sacramento can be. We went down to the shoreline and saw a paddlewheel view of the Delta King and the public dock on the west side of the river. Again there was that cryptic nautical message we had seen from the window of the restaurant. 

Once we were back to Front Street however, we decided a horse drawn carriage was a better way to enjoy the storefronts and experience the general ambience. The Top Hand Ranch Carriage Company advertised that in Old Sacramento, "Experience Old Town, the Sacramento of the Gold Rush. Enjoy museums, restaurants, shops, the Delta King paddle boat, and a Historic Park". So we clambered aboard, rollator and all, and this is the figure eight route we took. We started on the lower loop not far from The Delta King, road south very near railroad tracks, around Crocker Park, back north along the streets of Old Town, passing the railroad museum, and past more rail cars. It was fun to listen to the clip clop of the horses hooves especially echoing in the underpasses when we experienced the rush down hill to ease the horse's effort going up hill.

In the lower loop we circumvented Crocker Park clockwise and rode past the Crocker Art Museum. Per Wikipedia, The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States. There is a very old section that used to be the Crocker family mansion from the 1880's and a new addition from the 2010's. The third photo shows the new and old side by side.

As we completed the lower loop of the figure eight, we headed north into the downtown shops and restaurants in the cobble stone and boardwalk area. We passed by the California State Railroad Museum where we had been the night before.

I remember the Mad Hatter Doughnuts from a previous visit with Alex. He had really chowed down on those fresh warm doughnuts. He'd been fascinated watching them get cooked and removed from the vat of cooking oil. Yum. Is there any other place in the country where you can spy a cannon sitting on a roof? Well, maybe yes if the building is a fort. Frank was on the wrong side of our carriage to be able to see, this so I snapped a photo to prove it was perched atop Fanny Ann's Saloon.

Our ride ended just beyond the Delta King. After disembarking, we crossed Front Street to check out this toy store. How could you not  explore a store titled G. Wilikers-Toy-Emporium? The checkout counter had a very impressive front with all the alphabet blocks.

Our timing heading back to the Delta King was impeccable. At the top of the down ramp a large locomotive was being repositioned and we were so close we thoroughly enjoyed a big visual and loud audio feast.

We got some cold refreshments at the Delta Bar and Grill where I admired this stained glass window of a paddleboat, then retired to rest a bit in our stateroom. Frank napped. I read a decades old uncomplicated book ©2000 by Sandra Brown. It was fast action plot —a hold up in a gas station convenience store with one of the hostages being a pregnant young woman about to give birth. There were no parallel timelines to juggle and the characters were limited in number. I finished it in an afternoon. The Standoff got me out of my recent inexplicable reading slump. It was not until I was writing this blog post that I noticed the book's truly appropriate cover illustration.

Finally it is time for me to explain those cryptic nautical messages. They are displayed as light boxes that are positioned over two public docks which face each other across the Sacramento River between the I-Street Bridge (north) and Tower Bridge (south). The key to the maritime signal alphabet follows.

The two-lined message on the Sacramento Dock spells out ISABEL NARANJO (note the checkerboard repeated N and hale white/blue block for A. The one-line message on the opposite West Sacramento Dock spells out ETENESH ZELEKE (note the repeated half blue/red block for E). These are the names of two women instrumental in humanitarian works in Sacramento and West Sacramento. 

Isabel Naranjo, nominated by a granddaughter, had been a migrant farmworker before settling in Sacramento, and distributed food and clothing to farmworkers in the region, and created childcare centers for farmworkers’ children. Etenesh Zeleke, also nominated by a granddaughter, immigrated to West Sacramento from Ethiopia, and guided her family in their new home.

To learn more about the background of these two women check out the link for the river crossing nominees. The art effort for these signs was part of the river crossing project which of itself overall is quite special. Rather than naming landmarks for wealthy famous people, it sought to recognize humble people who did a lot for very little praise. This Youtube video put out by West Sacramento is well worth watching.  Phrases from it that caught my attention were: 

• turn around the paradigm whereby public space is named after the rich or the great and the good
• name public space after people that we can connect with perhaps more easily 
• stories that are otherwise hidden of people that are important in Sacramento and West Sacramento
• concept of extraordinary people among the ordinary

Friday Evening Explorations
On Friday evening after dinner we decided to explore the destination of the elevator from the 3rd deck to the 2nd deck. To our surprise it opened up onto a mini-museum with memorabilia and a history of the Delta King.

There is no guarantee that this speed control instrumentation and lighting hardware was from the Delta King or Delta Queen but it from that early era. In researching speed control on paddle boats I learned that a telegraphic signal is sent to the engine room and instructions are received back with granted permission and how to adjust speed.

An engine order telegraph or E.O.T., also referred to as a Chadburn, is a communications device used on a ship for the pilot on the bridge to order engineers in the engine room to power the vessel at a certain desired speed. Traditional EOTs required a pilot wanting to change speed to "ring" the telegraph on the bridge, moving the handle to a different position on the dial. This would ring a bell in the engine room and move their pointer to the position on the dial selected by the bridge. The engineers hear the bell and move their handle to the same position to signal their acknowledgment of the order, and adjust the engine speed accordingly. Such an order is called a "bell".

The rest room on the 2nd deck had portal designations. I examined early photos of the Delta King and saw only square windows; but these were interesting anyway.

 

A passerby helped us take of photo of Frank and me beside a huge ship's wheel. Again there was so sign indicating that this was actually from the Delta King but it is a memory from our visit.

From the first paragraph in our hotel directory in our stateroom we learned that

The historic Delta King is an authentic 285-foot riverboat that was originally built in Glasgow, Scotland, and Stockton, California.The King and her identical twin, the DeltaQueen, were christened on May 20, 1927and began their daily river voyages between San Francisco and Sacramento in June of that year. At 6:00 pm each evening, the grand monarchs of the Delta left their docks for the 10 ½ hour trip that included prohibition era drinking, jazz bands, gambling and fine dining. A stateroom was $3.50, but for a dollar and "your own blanket" the night could be spent on the Cargo Deck.

Summarizing the later paragraphs...

• Built in Glasgow, Scotland and Stockton, CA and christened in 1927
• Active on Sacramento River in 1930s til more boats, cars, and bridges came about
• Served Navy in1940s in San Francisco Bay as net tenders, floating barracks, troop transports, and hospital ships
• 1984 towed to Sacramento for 5 year renovation
• Today original 88 staterooms now number 44 larger rooms. The award-winning restaurants offer Sacramento's most romantic waterfront views.

Saturday Heading Home

What would a trip away be without a visit to a fabric store? Located 18 minutes and 7.4 miles northwest of Delta King and not too much out of our way along the trip home, we stopped at Fabric Garden. Located at 2654 Marconi Ave #155, Sacramento, CA 95821, it is advertised generically as a premier quilt and cotton fabric shop. I bought very little — some gray fabric on clearance for a future quilt back — but I enjoyed browsing. This pillow caught my eye. Now I have a purpose for those zipper remnants that I do not have the heart to discard. I also got a chuckle out of a cartoon posted on their bulletin board.

Frank and I are glad we made the trip, spurred on by a random email from the California State Railroad Museum. Maybe next time we are in Old Sacramento we will check out the Crocker Art Museum and perhaps even an underground miniature golf course we discovered on a map after returning home to Livermore... in addition to the railroad museum, of course.