John Augustus Sutter arrived in the city of Yerba Buena, which would become the city of San Francisco, after encountering a massive storm en route from the city of Sitka, Russian Alaska; he was later redirected by Mexican officials to the colonial capital of Monterey, where he appealed to governor Juan Bautista Alvarado of Alta California his ambitions to establish an "empire of civilization" on "new land". Alvarado noted that he needed to establish a presence in the Sacramento Valley, and realized that Sutter's ambitions allowed him an opportunity to secure the valley without committing extra troops to the region. As a result, he granted Sutter's request on the condition that Sutter would become a Mexican citizen. Sutter commenced to build a fort of his namesake, Sutter's Fort, in 1840; the fort became his base of operations. New Helvetia was roughly in size until he negotiated an 1841 deal with the Russians to purchase Ft. Ross, which lay in present-day Sonoma County, and consolidated all of Ft. Ross' holdings with those at Fort Sutter.