Recent research conducted by historians at UC Berkeley has shed light on the origin and etymology of Sacramento, providing critical historical proof of a theory that until now had been held by only a few intrepdid revisionists in a tiny minority of the academic community (i.e., crackpots).  Documents in the Universidad del Espagnol de St. Juan de Borquia (known in the Roman texts as St. John of the Bogus) have proven that early conquistadors in search of the fountain of youth, and sailing from Spain, had heard rumors of a holy herb that would create such a fountain. This herb, a native shrub of California, the “mentos”, was said to produce the fountain of youth in combination with certain beverages. It was considered sacred to the Native Americans of the Central Valley, and there was an apocryphal tradition that the absence of the active substance in mentos caused certain forms of mental illness (hence “de-mentia”).

The herb was found in quantity in the on the slopes between dry dirt-pits of the Central Valley and the Heights of Del Paso, and so the Spanish missionaries and traders ventured to the valley in search of the holy mentos (or “Sacra-mento”, as it was known in Spanish). Its fountain producing properties were proven by Don Julio de Boulevard, the first Marquis de Coca Cola, as early as 1569. Don Julio later settled in the northern part of the area near what would later be known as Elkhorn Blvd.

No original paintings from the period have survived. Here is an artist’s rendition of what the Spanish church later came to call the “revelation of Don Julio”:

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