Boulevard Park’s History
by Paula Boghosian
Available at www.arcadiapublishing.com
The origins of a residential neighborhood called “Boulevard Park” date back to 1905, when the land previously used for the California State Fair’s stock grounds and racetrack (then known as “Agricultural Park”) was cleared and subdivided into lots of varying sizes, all contained within the area bounded by B, H, 20th and 23rd Streets. Properties sold fast. Single-family dwellings were followed by multiple family residences—duplexes, fourplexes, and, starting in the 1920s, the occasional apartment building. Larger homes were on the south side of the development, not far from the H Street trolley line. Smaller ones—including the popular five-room bungalows—tended to be on the north side near the railroad tracks along the B Street levee. As stipulated by its creators, the entire development originally was strictly residential, lacking any shops or businesses.
Distinctive landscape features of Boulevard Park include the grassy, tree-filled median strips running down the centers of 21st and 22nd Streets and the three large “center block parks” shared by the residents whose homes surround them. A fourth alley park, indicated in the original plans for the neighborhood, was never realized.
Residential development around the south side of Agricultural Park, predating Boulevard Park, was spurred by the existence of the fairgrounds as well as the construction of a horse-drawn trolley line along H Street connecting the downtown Central Pacific Railroad passenger station to the fairgrounds, eventually extending to what is now McKinley Park. Most Victorian-era homes in the Boulevard Park area date from this period.
Boulevard Park is home to two historic districts. One, on the National Register of Historic Places, celebrates the original Boulevard Park development on the former site of Agricultural Park. The other, on the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources, incudes the Boulevard Park subdivision as well as residential development to the south and east made possible by the trolley line.
Key Dates in Greater Boulevard Park History
Pre-1800s
The Valley Nisenan people (or Southern Maidu), a Native American tribe, live by hunting, fishing, and gathering in the fertile drainages of the Bear, Yuba, and American Rivers down to the Sacramento River. The southern portion of what is now the City of Sacramento is controlled by the Plains Miwok people. Both the Nisenan and Miwok participate in an extensive east-west trade network between the Pacific coast and the Great Basin to the east of the Sierra Nevada.