Sacramento appoints new city historian: Ty Smith

Another Sacramento historic event took place on June 1 — Ty Smith became the newest City Historian for the Center of Sacramento History.

As the newest city historian, Smith will oversee the Center for Sacramento History, which holds the city’s archival collection from the gold rush to the present. He will be responsible for preserving those records and using the information to inform and guide the community. 

Smith, in his third week in office, said one part of his job is to be a civic leader who works with community members and organizations interested in preserving the past.

“The work of a public historian, it's less about being like a time traveler — trying to capture neat moments in the past — and more about finding ways to connect the dots to connect people to their histories to help people imagine their futures through understanding our collective past,” Smith said. “So I plan to be pretty innovative in my approach, pretty community responsive.” 

In addition to becoming a civic leader, Smith said his goal as the city historian is to help make the Center for Sacramento History a community resource and not just a research facility.

“I don't know the exact recipe, but I do know the ingredients. The more we engage with the community, the more we have open and honest dialogues about aspects of our past and how they relate to our present.” ~ Ty Smith
Smith said he’s a community resource that can also help research questions and uncover stories that are in the archive. 

“As a city historian, I collect, I keep and I can also help empower other people to do that,” he said. “I see a neat relationship between the past, present, and therefore the future in a way that pivots from history, but is really about empowering our lives, about helping to cure what ails in certain kinds of ways.”

History of the historian 

Born in Salinas, Smith grew up all over California before coming to the City of Trees. He said he came to Sacramento three separate times in his life, but the first was when he got a promotion and also to start graduate school at Sacramento State.

Smith said while in community college he met people who influenced, nurtured and invested in him. He wanted to emulate them, and those people happened to be anthropologists and historians.

“That kind of set me on that path, thinking that I would want to teach community college just like them, but you have to do stuff in the meantime,” he said. “So, my meantime gig, besides working in auto parts, was to be a seasonal guide at Hearst Castle, and that's how I got my foot in the door with California State Parks.”

He previously spent time as the director for the California State Railroad Museum and Old Sacramento State Historic Park before being appointed the city historian.

“I was always interested in Sacramento history, I think it's just a tremendous slept-on a little bit city,” he said. “Our local history here is world history, and that goes well beyond the Gold Rush.”

Favorite Sacramento history

As Smith gets settled into his new role, he said he’s been doing a lot of research and work with the Sacramento Historical Society in researching the city’s first Black attorney, Nathaniel Colley. Colley was a civil rights leader who advocated for public housing.

Colley came to Sacramento in 1948 as a trained lawyer and couldn’t get a job with any law firm, but he decided to open his own, becoming the city’s first Black attorney, according to Smith.

“At a time of a growing black professional class, successive waves of great migration after the war, 300,000 black and African American people came to California,” he said.  “So I'm excited about the research and learning more about that kind of NAACP ecosystem throughout Sacramento, and Sacramento has something to say to the nation in terms of that history, so it's top of mind now.”

City historian Ty Smith looks through files in the Center for Sacramento History Monday June 8, 2026.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Smith said he also recently looked through a file on Russ Solomon, the founder of Tower Records.

“Tower Records are gone, and yet that legacy lives on, and that emanated from Sacramento too.”

Choosing the new historian 

Megan Van Voorhis, the director of Convention and Cultural Services for the city, said they were familiar with his previous work at the railroad museum. When the position became vacant Smith came out as the “clear winner” as the next city historian. 

“He brings just a wonderful breadth of experience in the history space, and so much vision around what could be, and how the community can really engage with history,” Van Voorhis said. “I'm really excited to begin the process of working with him in this new capacity.”

Van Voorhis believes Smith will do great in his new role and hopes he can elevate how the city engages with its history.

“We've talked a lot about, as a city, about the potential of, we have so many things that the public doesn't necessarily get to experience, but so many stories that are told within our collections and photography, and etc,” she said. “We think that this role can serve in a stronger role of helping people really begin to think about what does history look like when elevated in this city, as we do other things like arts, arts, and culture.”