Isleton, CA

Isleton is a small Sacramento County city on Andrus Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Josiah Pool founded the town in 1874, first building a wharf and a cluster of shops, lodging, and river services along the levee. Reclaimed Delta farmland brought sugar beets, asparagus, and canneries, while California State Route 160 and the Isleton Bridge now carry the road traffic that once moved by river. The city’s Main Street still carries the layered look of a Delta port, with older storefronts and newer local businesses sharing the same narrow grid.

ATTRSarah Stierch / CC BY 4.0

Isleton’s Chinese and Japanese Commercial Districts were built around the agricultural labor and cannery economy of the early twentieth century and were listed on the National Register in 1991. The Isleton History Museum occupies a 1926 building that once housed a Bing Kong Tong and a Chinese language school. City Hall, the fire department, public works, Isleton Elementary, the library, and the museum fill in the current civic map. Isleton is a levee town with a working agricultural past, a visible Asian American history, and a present-day Main Street that still depends on the Delta around it.