Sacramento has a rich and unique history, full of historic landmarks and famous old neighborhoods that link the city to many famous figures from well before the Gold Rush. This past spring, some Sacramento State history students got an opportunity to document a small part of that history by writing a book in their Public History Research Seminar course.

East Sacramento and Oak Park are the two books that came out of the course.

&We try to create a project that will be useful for the public at large. It&s a group project as opposed to the other class where you try to do a more traditional history research,& said history professor Lee Simpson, who edited the books.

Typically, the class writes a proposal for getting a local landmark into the National Register of Historic Places, a part of the National Park Service. However, the opportunity to publish two full books was simply too tempting of an idea to pass up.

&I thought it would be really interesting to collaborate and work to get something recognized as a national treasure,& said James Sharum, one of the contributors of the East Sacramento book.

&We chose East Sac and Oak Park because Oak Park is one of the first suburbs of Sacramento, so it&s important historically. East Sac became a suburb about the same time Oak Park did and its an area that is currently undergoing a lot of change,& Simpson said.

Both books are full of pictures of local citizens and landmarks that tell the history of their respective communities as part of the Images in America series from Arcadia Publishing. The images were collected from many different sources, primarily the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center, although some from private citizens.

&The vast majority of (the pictures) come from SAMCC and we supplemented that from private collections, members of the community,& Simpson said. &We were allowed to publish them without having to pay the normal fee and, in return, all the royalties are going to SAMCC.&

While edited by Simpson, the book itself was written by students. Each student came up with ideas for chapters in the book, collected photos, wrote the captions for the photos and the introduction to each chapter, and did the initial edits.

&We tried to get a range of pictures showed the scope of time and scope of variety in the community,& Sharum said. &We wanted to try to give as broad a perspective of the community, from the past to the present, as we could.&

Despite the work, it was a popular project with the students

&(The students) loved it. They were kind of unsure at first, but they had a real sense of pride when hey saw their name in print,& Simpson said.

&It sounded like it was going to be this huge deal, but it ended up being a lot of fun. I was actually living in East Sac at the time and it was great to learn about the place that I had been living for several years,& Sharum said.

Both books are currently available in the Hornet Bookstore and can be purchased online at www.arcadiapublishing.com.