When Sacramento's wealthiest man died in 1911, he left the city $250,000 to buy a public park, though the city spent four years tangled in court before it could touch the money. The benefactor was William Land, a hotelier who built the Western Hotel downtown. Once the lawsuits cleared in 1918, the city bought 238 acres of the old town of Sutterville for just $147,000.

What grew there is now William Land Regional Park, home to the Sacramento Zoo, the storybook rides of Fairytale Town, the pint-sized Funderland, a golf course, and a Works Progress Administration rock garden built from rustic stone during the Depression. Land himself rests, somewhat incongruously, in a Greek temple mausoleum at the cemetery he also founded.

VoiceMap's audio tours of Sacramento trace the city's growth from gold rush town to state capital, the same ambition that turned one bequest into a beloved park.