Sacramento flooded so many times in its first twenty-five years that this engraving of the painting by G. W. Casilear could reflect a number of such calamities. However, the caption on this print refers to the event as "The Great Inundation" and research shows that this engraving from W. L. Ormsby depicts the floods of 1850. Waterman Lilly Ormsby was a master engraver specializing in bank notes. He founded the Continental Bank Note company, did extensive work for the U.S. treasury (including major work on the five-dollar note) and aided famed inventor S. F. B. Morse in his telegraphic alphabet and played a hand in transmitting messages at the first public exhibition of the telegraph in New York City.
