SacTown
Bear Flag Tours
Providing professional educational tours of Historic Sacramento
In-Person Tours are back!
SacTown Bear Flag Tours has been providing 4th graders, in and outside the Sacramento area, quality tours for nearly 30 years. These venues relate to California History and the 4th grade curriculum. The inaugural tours originated under the creative vision of Betty Coppola with the Coppola Company (now known as Sactown Bear Flag Tours).
The venues include the California Railroad Museum, State Capitol building and grounds, the Sacramento River Waterfront, Sutter’s Fort, and gold panning near the banks of the historic Sacramento River!
Our imaginative and informative tour-guides meet the school buses full of excited 4th grade students as they arrive in Sacramento before leading classes on a scheduled tour of California History.
While tours were shut down due to the pandemic, we applied our expertise to create a virtual tour to bring Sacramento/Old Sacramento to the students! Our tour-guides, along with a former Radio/TV Production student, wrote, directed, filmed, and edited all of the segments included in the 7 virtual tours. The virtual tour is now included with the purchase of any in-person tour! You may use our virtual tour as an ‘Intro’ before the field trip or as a ‘Review’ afterwards. Lesson plans for each video, along with projects, are included in the package for your class.
Old Sacramento has a special place in history as the Western terminus, especially at the beginning of the Gold Rush when so many prospectors, from (literally) all around the globe, poured into California with the dreams of striking it rich.
We hope to see you in Sacramento soon!
Contact Us:
David Ted Biesanz (owner)
dtbiesanz12@icloud.com
(916) 801-0123
Testimonials:
“I just want to thank you so much for the outstanding job you did with the 7 virtual tours of Sacramento! They are all wonderful from Old Town, RR Museum, State Capitol, and Sutter’s Fort! You have filmed them so beautifully with all the venues and the wonderful input from the docents! You have made Sacramento come to life for my students by including great discussing points and outstanding projects for them to work on for culminating activities!! Thank you so much for offering this wonderful activity during this crazy time! It is almost like being in Sacramento together! This is a wonderful production and my students love it! Thank you!”
As a teacher, I was incredibly disappointed to have to cancel in-person field trips, especially our annual trip to Sacramento. Luckily the incredible Bear Flag Tour team worked tirelessly to put together engaging, informative, and fun virtual tours of all the important sites. You can watch them in one play list or separate each site into its own lesson. Plus they provided resources to extend the lessons and assess what the students learned. What more can a teacher ask for? My students loved our virtual trips and can’t wait to visit in person. If you are not able to attend an in person tour with Bear Flag I highly recommend their virtual trips. You won’t be disappointed.
~Fourth Grade Teacher - Glorietta Elementary in Orinda, California
I am a fourth grade teacher who has brought my students to Sacramento through Bear Flag Tours (formally Copolla Company) for seven years. I even went on the field trip as a chaperone two extra times with my own children. This team of tour-guides is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic to share their wealth of information about California history. The in person comprehensive field trip included guided tours to the State Capitol, the Railroad Museum, The Sacramento River Walk, Gold Panning and Sutter's Fort. Students also enjoyed time to wander down the historic streets of Old Sacramento.
Due to COVID, this year our school participated in the Bear Flag Tours virtual field trip. The package included seven videos of Sacramento's points of interest. Each video came with a worksheet and a list of student projects. My students thoroughly enjoyed the videos and the projects I assigned. They thought learning about California history through another platform and participating in hands-on projects was more interesting than reading from a social studies textbook. Best of all, the virtual field trip was economically priced! I would highly recommend the in person or the virtual Bear Flag Tours field trips to Sacramento for sure: Affordable, Memorable, and Enjoyable!
~Fourth Grade Teacher - Kolb Elementary in Dublin, California