Editing Sutter County, California (section)

==History==
The [[Maidu]] were the people living in the area of Sutter County when European settlers arrived.<ref>Capace, Nancy (1999). ''Encyclopedia of California''. North American Book Dist LLC. Page 448. {{ISBN|9780403093182}}.</ref>

Sutter County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. Parts of the county were given to [[Placer County, California|Placer County]] in 1852.

Sutter County is named after [[John Augustus Sutter]], a German native born to Swiss parents. He was one of the first Europeans to recognize the Sacramento Valley for its potential in agriculture. His Hock Farm, established in 1841 on the Feather River just south of present-day Yuba City, was the site of the first major farm in the Central Valley, and used extensive slave labor from Natives in order to function.<ref name="jstor.org">{{cite journal|last1=Hurtado|first1=Albert|date=Spring 1990|title=California Indians and the Workaday West: Labor, Assimilation, and Survival|journal=California History|volume=69|issue=1|page=5|doi=10.2307/25177303|jstor=25177303}}</ref>

Sutter obtained the [[Rancho New Helvetia]] Mexican land grant, and called his first settlement [[New Helvetia]] (which included the present day [[Sacramento, California|city of Sacramento]]). In 1850, Sutter retired to Hock Farm when the [[California Gold Rush|gold rush]] led to him losing his holdings in Sacramento.

Sutter County is the birthplace (Yuba City, 1858) of [[John Joseph Montgomery]], who was the first American to successfully pilot a heavier-than-air craft, 20 years before the Wright Brothers, and who held the first patent for an "aeroplane."

In the 1890s, Sutter County was one of the two prohibition counties in California; the other was Riverside County. Both outlawed saloons and sale or consumption of alcohol in public.<ref>Berkeley Gazette, 1905. July 28</ref>