Knights Landing ~ Elevation 48 - Elevation Signs on Waymarking.com

Knights Landing was founded in 1843, by Dr. William Knight, a practicing physician from Baltimore, Maryland. William Knight built on a mound that marked the ancient meeting place of Native Americans inhabiting the regions about Cache Creek and the Sacramento River. The site early demonstrated its importance as a steamboat landing and point of communication between the people east and west of the big central river. When the town was laid out in 1849 they called it Baltimore, but an agreement over the sale of the new town lots could not be amicably arranged and the title Baltimore was lost. Knight established a ferry there, which afterwards passed to the ownership of J. W. Snowball. In those days the ferry tolls were for a man and horse, $1; for a team and wagon, $5. In 1850 S. R. Smith kept a hotel in the settlement and in 1853 Charles F. Reed surveyed and laid out a townsite and it was given officially the name of Knight's Landing. That year J. W. Snowball and J. J. Perkins opened a large general merchandise store on the Native American mound. On 1 January Capt. J. H. Updegraff opened his hotel under festive auspices, with a grand New Year's party, with tickets $10, a steamer being run from Sacramento for the accommodation of guests. The establishment was called the "Yolo House." In 1860 D. N. Hershey and Oeorge Glascock erected a brick hotel, which took the place of the Yolo House, that inn being retired to the status of a private residence. On March 25, 1890, the Knight's Landing branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad was completed and ready for business, and later the completion of the bridge across the river added immensely to the prosperity of the town.