Monteverde Store Museum, Sutter Creek, California

Therefore, you Sutter Creek readers especially, know that the Monteverde store was started and completed in the summer of 1898, and is over 100 years old today.

Immigrant Giovanni Monteverde probably settled in California, if not Amador and Sutter Creek, by 1874. A five-year residency in the United States was required before one could become a citizen. Giovanni became a citizen in 1879. Son James Alexander was born in California in about 1875.

If we knew the story of how this illiterate (at least in English) Italian immigrant here found liberty and the chance to have his own store, it could inspire us all.

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, and the Chronicling America Database