California 1
California - The Golden State
Major facts on California
California is the third largest state of the US, only Alaska and Texas are larger. It has a population of 33,871,647 people (34 million) and it covers and area of 410,000 km².
California is nicknamed the Golden State and its capital is Sacramento. The name California comes from a mythical Spanish island ruled by a queen called Califia that was featured in a Spanish romance. The official State Flag of California, called the Bear Flag was designed by William Todd and was first used on the 14th June 1846. The flag pictures a grizzly bear and a star. The State Tree is the Redwood, which is the tallest tree in California, growing up to 113 meters tall and living for over thousand years.
California became an American state on the 9th September 1850 and is the 31st state of the US. The most important cities are Los Angeles, (Los Angeles is the second largest city of the USA, just New York is larger) San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Anaheim and Newport Beach. The most important rivers are the Sacramento River, Colorado River and the San Joaquin River. There are a lot of people who speak Spanish, because there is a big share of Mexican and Cuban inhabitants.
Name and Geography
At first, "California" meant the peninsula on the west coast of modern Mexico now known as Baja California or Lower California, and the Spaniards believed that they had discovered an enormous island. Only as they ventured further inland did they find that "California" extended north to join the continent, and they named this extension "Alta California," the region that now forms the 31st state of the United States of America.
Even in physical terms that state is a region of extremes. It stretches 1,328 km from its northwest corner on the 42nd parallel on the Pacific Ocean to its southeast corner on the 32nd parallel at the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers. The winding shoreline contains 2,034 km of beaches and harbors. And elevations run from 4,418 meters at the peak of Mount Whitney to 86 meters below sea level at Death Valley.
The complex geologic forces behind these phenomena created a region with exceptionally complicated and challenging topography. To the west, the Coast Ranges and the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges of mountains run along the Pacific. The state's northern boundary runs through the Klamath and Cascade Mountains and the Modoc Plateau. Running south from these northern highlands, the Great Valley of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers extends 644 km, bounded by the Coastal Mountains in the west and the Sierra Nevadas in the east. The Sierra Nevadas the state's largest single mountain range - run south for 644 km. East of the southern Sierra Nevadas are the mountains of the Great Basin, with the Sierras and Basin ranges bounded on the south by the Mojave Desert. Below the Mojave lies the Salton Trough, a desert created when the Baja California peninsula pulled away from the Mexican mainland.
California's climates are as varied as her physical regions. There are heavy snows in the high mountain ranges, mild and temperate conditions along the coast, wide variations in temperature and humidity in the valleys, arid conditions and great temperature fluctuations in the desert.
Colonization
The First Peoples of California
The earliest Californians were adventurous Asians who made their way across the Bering Straits to Alaska thousands of years ago when a colder climate and a now-vanished land bridge made such travel easier. These men and women and their descendants settled North and South America, spreading out to form the various nations and tribes whom the first European visitors to this hemisphere called "Indians". The mountain ranges of the Pacific Coast isolated these early settlers from other Indian nations. They lived together in family groups or clans with little political structure, unlike the larger tribes and nations to the east. Horses were unknown to them, since European settlement came late to California. Thus divided and isolated, the original Californians were a diverse population, separated by language into as many as 135 distinct dialects. On the other hand, the mountains that divided the groups made extensive warfare impractical, and the California tribes and clans enjoyed a comparatively peaceful life.
The region's lack of rain during the growing season meant that agriculture was not a practical means of livelihood for early Californians, but the gentle climate and rich soil enabled these groups to live by skillfully harvesting and processing wild nuts and berries and by catching the fish that crowded the streams.
An ample food supply, temperate climate, and absence of wars contributed to a large, healthy population. It has been estimated that when Europeans first came to California, the native population was probably close to 300,000 - 13 percent of the indigenous peoples in North America.
Spanish California
California's contact with Europeans began in the mid 1530s when Cortez's men ventured to Baja California. Not until 1542 did Spaniards sail north to Alta California, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's expedition of that year made landings as far north as modern Santa Barbara.
Still, more than two hundred years passed before Spain made any serious effort to colonize the coastal regions. Coastal winds and currents made the voyage north difficult, and Spanish captains failed to find safe harbors for their ships. Baja California became the northwest limit of Spanish colonization, and even there, efforts to settle the area and bring native tribes to Christianity and European ways were half hearted at best. So it was not before the second half of the 19th century that Spain seriously tried to gain control of Alta California.
This was to be done through a combination of military forts (presidios) and mission churches overseen by Franciscan fathers.
The Missions
After 1769, the life of the California natives who came in contact with the Spanish was reshaped by the mission fathers, not by townspeople or soldiers. The Franciscans came to California not merely to convert the tribes to Christianity but to train them for life in a European colonial society. In the missions they were taught Spanish as well as the rules of their new religion and trained in skills that would fit them for their new lives: brickmaking and construction, raising cattle and horses, blacksmithing, weaving, tanning hides, etc.
By the 1830s, sixty-five years of exposure to Europeans had reduced the number of California's native peoples by half to about 150,000. Althoughwarfare cost few lives, Spaniards had introduced not only Christianity but also new diseases to which the natives had no resistance, and thousands died in epidemics. Crowded, harsh living conditions at the missions contributed to the Indians' health problems, and infant mortality and death rates among young children soared.
Mexican California
From the beginning of the 19th century more and more Spanish American colonies, began to fight for independence. In 1821, Mexico achieved her independence, and word of this event reached Alta California the following year. The new Mexican republic was determined to move to "secularize" the missions, to remove the natives and the mission property from the control of the Franciscan missionaries.
This process began in California in 1834. In theory, the Franciscans had administered the mission lands in trust for the natives living there when the missionaries arrived, but few Native Americans benefited from the end of the mission system: although each family was to receive a small allotment from the former mission lands, the few who tried to make a living from these plots gave up after few years. Most of the missions' lands were disposed of in large grants to white Californians or recently-arrived, immigrants from Mexico.
A new culture sprang up now in California: the legendary life of the ranchero. Cattle-raising and the marketing of beef and hides became the central factors of economic life. With the end of the missions, most local attempts at manufacturing stopped. So the Californian ranchersbecame more and more dependent on the goods brought by the foreign merchants who came in search of hides. British, Canadian, and United States settlers moved to northern California. And more and more trappers and daring "mountain men" followed their taste for adventure and their search for furs in northern California and across the Sierras further south.The first United States citizens to come overland to California were trappers led by Jedediah Smith in 1826. The first organized group of settlers from the United States who crossed the Plains to California was the party led by John Bidwell and John Bartleson in 1841. Once in California, Bidwell went to work for Johann August Sutter (1803-1880), the most important of the foreign immigrants in Mexican California. A German-born Swiss businessman, Sutter arrived in San Francisco in 1839 and obtained an enormous grant of 48,000 acres at the junction of the Sacramento and American Rivers, where he established "New Helvetia," a settlement with a fort, orchards, vineyards, and wheat fields. Sutter's fort soon became a stopover for the American settlers who followed the Bidwell party through the Sierras.
Mexico always had trouble ruling her distant province and in 1845 California had achieved home rule. By then, California was home to a native population now reduced to less than 100,000 and to some 14,000 other permanent residents.
The United States and California
The Mexican government and Spanish-speaking Californians became increasingly suspicious of the motives of the "Americans" of the United States. There were many hard-fought battles with Mexican troops and Californian ranchers on one side and American soldiers and settlers on the other before the Mexican War in California ended in the Americans' favor with the capitulation in January 1847.
The territory of Alta California was then home to 150,000 indigenous peoples and 14,000 inhabitants of European and Mexican descent. Most of the surviving native tribes and clans lived in the mountainous north where the mission fathers had not spread Christianity and European diseases, while most of these 14,000 newcomers lived in the south, clustered around Monterey and Los Angeles. All realized that United States government would bring great changes, but none could have anticipated just how quickly those changes would come.
The Gold Rush
The Discovery of Gold
In 1847, Sutter could finally proceed with his plans to lay out a town near his fort to attract some of the expected hordes of American settlers who would now stream through the passes of the Sierras. A town would require lumber, and for this Sutter needed a nearby sawmill so that he could reap the profits of every process in creating "Sutterville."
Sutter's partner James Marshall found a site for the proposed sawmill, a place called Coloma about 45 miles from Sutter's Fort on the south fork of the American River. When the workers had finished the sawmill, they set to work deepening the stream so that the millrace would have adequate power. On January 24, 1848, as Marshall went down to the river to inspect progress, he found gold in the stream.
As word of the gold discovery spread, Sutter's and Marshall's workmen left their jobs to "dig" for gold along the American River and its tributaries, and Sutter's fort and fields were soon deserted. Soon more and more people rushed inland to the gold fields. As word spread outside California in the following months, new national and ethnic groups contributed their share to the fascinating mix of the gold fields. When the government officially confirmed the gold strike in December 1848, the news triggered a mass exodus to California. The "Forty Niners" were on their way.
The Forty Niners
In the next year, close to 100,000 people went to California from the United States, Europe, and every other corner of the globe. Gold-seekers from Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and China continued to sail across the Pacific along well established trade routes. The journey was far more complicated for citizens of the United States. A voyage from the East Coast to California around Cape Horn was 27,359 km long and could easily take five months.
There was a shorter alternative: sailing to Panama, crossing the isthmus by foot or horseback, and sailing to California from Central America's Pacific Coast. However, until 1850 there was no regular steamship travel in the Pacific, and passengers might find themselves stranded in Panama for weeks or months waiting for a ship to California. Most of these came to the port of San Francisco, once known as Yerba Buena, and the tiny town boomed.
For those without money for the sea passage the only route to California lay overland across the Plains and through one of the mountain passes on California's eastern border. In 1849, 25,000 to 30,000 men, women, and children followed these routes.
Not everyone who came to California during the Gold Rush planned to earn a fortune by using a pan or a pickaxe in the gold fields. Many enterprising young men and women realized that there was just as much money to be made by providing the gold miners with goods and services.
In addition, many who came to mine gold found that business and farming in California were more satisfying and reliable sources of income.
California Trail
Expansion of rail service in California had one result that was never anticipated by the businessmen and politicians of San Francisco and Sacramento who worked so hard for the transcontinental link. The extension of the transcontinental rail line also triggered a boom in the southern part of the state, a boom that picked up even more steam once the Santa Fe Railway gave Los Angeles its own direct line to the East in 1885, a line in direct competition with the Southern Pacific. Los Angeles’s population quadrupled in the 1880s, and doubled again by 1900.
The expansion of railways through Southern California in the 1880s prompted the calculated promotion of the region as a healthy, comfortable place to make a home. Railroads wanted not only passengers but prospective homeowners who would buy lots in areas where the rail companies had received government land grants which they now needed to sell.
Of course, not even during the Gold Rush did everyone who came to California plan to stay permanently. Those who headed for the mines often hoped to stay only long enough to become rich and then head for home. Yet, few miners realized their dreams of fortune. Many returned home, broken in spirit and poorer for their efforts.
But now rail travel meant that ordinary Americans could see the natural wonders of California, scenic wonders that early miners and visitors had touted for decades. American railroads and local California businessmen were only too happy to encourage tourists to see the redwoods of the sequoia forests and the waterfalls and cliffs of the Yosemite Valley.
From Gold Rush to Golden State
Government and Law
It was August 1848 before the United States Senate ratified the treaty ending the Mexican War and recognizing the transfer of California to American hands. Local Army commanders, "Forty-eighters," Hispanic rancheros - all waited anxiously for details of the form of territorial government California would enjoy. When no news arrived, local residents took matters in their own hands, with mass meetings as early as December 1848 debating California's political future. As tens of thousands of "Forty-Niners" joined the rush, the need became more pressing. Congress and the President did nothing, and in September 1849, forty-eight delegates met in Monterey to draw up a state constitution. The document was closely modeled on the constitutions of Iowa and New York, home states of many members of the convention, and it made California a "free" state from which slavery would be excluded. The constitution was ratified by popular vote on November 13, and state officials were chosen the same day.
In the mining camps, it was the miners themselves who were responsible for local affairs. In only a few years, they worked out rules governing the discovery and exploitation of mineral resources that were later incorporated into state and federal statutes. As for criminal law, miners and local townspeople were equally efficient in dealing out their own form of justice. As towns sprang up near the camps, newly appointed officials were appointed to impose order.Finally, on September 9, 1850, President Fillmore signed the bill that gave California statehood.