A Brief History
On January 26, 1959, the California State Lands Commission posted Chain Island, a 41 acre island in Suisun Bay where the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River meet, for sale with a minimum acceptable bid of $5,226.
Digging Deeper
An island made much larger than naturally occurring by the dumping of tailings from hydraulic mining up the rivers over the years, California had long intended to “remove” the island by hauling away the dirt and rocks, for use as a source of possible mineral recovery. Alas, removal never happened, and the island sat there in the way of shipping for many decades.
You may wonder how they came up with a price of at least $5,226, and so do we! While we have no idea how this price was arrived at, we do know that in March of 1959, the island was purchased by a private citizen for $5,258.20, which is somewhat more than $54,000 in today’s dollars.
Only a year later, Chain Island was put up for sale once again, this time for an asking price of $7,500, or around $80,000 in modern dollars. Along with the increase in price, the land area of the island was then claimed to be 58 acres, proving that inflation affects land as well as prices! The island was assessed at a value of $18,622 in late 2022.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Have you ever been on a privately owned island? Would you like to own one?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Castaneda, Christopher and Lee Simpson. River City and Valley Life: An Environmental History of the Sacramento Region. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013.
Willis, William. History of Sacramento County, California. Kindle, 2014.
The featured image in this article, an aerial photograph by Alfred Twu of the San Francisco Bay Area, is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
