When Comstock’s president and publisher Winnie Comstock-Carlson launched her eponymous magazine in 1989, the Capital Region was climbing steadily towards the peak of a roller coaster of change. In the previous few years, Sacramento got the Kings, light rail and its first female mayor, Anne Rudin, but it was still a sleepy place by most accounts, a “company town” for the state government, cut off from the busier coastal cities by a sealike swath of farmland. 

But that relative isolation turned out to be a boon. Over the years, it encouraged Sacramento and its surrounding towns to be self-sufficient, building tight-knit, mutually supportive communities. The supportive spirit extends to local industries, including agriculture and restaurants, business and tech, and arts and the broader creative scene. Just look at the shared resources that launched in the past few decades, including the CLARA, the Farm-to-Fork Festival, StartupSac and others — all part of a rising-tide-floats-all-boats mentality that’s rarely seen in larger cities. A shift toward mixed-use development, public transit and bicycle infrastructure that began in the 2000s also helped the Capital Region stand apart among American metropolises. 

Comstock’s has been documenting those changes every month for more than three decades, including the turbulent years after the COVID-19 pandemic that gutted so many other local and regional publications. At 35, the magazine is now one of the oldest print magazines still in existence in the region, and our archives are a chronicle of a city growing into its own. We dived into the stacks and reached out to local experts, including State Historian William Burg and City Historian Marcia Eymann, to highlight a few key moments that Comstock’s has made it through. 

–

Stay up to date on business in the Capital Region: Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.