Established as a steamer stop in 1851 by John Wesley Sharp, Walnut Grove is located in the Sacramento River Delta. In the late 1860s, hundreds of Chinese laborers laid off from railroad construction or leaving the gold mines, went to work building levees and farming the reclaimed land.

Adapted from the NRHP nomination submitted in 1990.

This forty-acre district contains twenty-one contributing buildings and eight noncontributing buildings.