Although the present-day state of California has been occupied for millennia, the lack of a written history and the significant marginalization in the population of native inhabitants after European colonization means that most of its known history begins with European exploration.
During that time, the area has gone from a Spanish outpost of interest primarily to missionaries and fur trappers, to a land of opportunity and wealth, first with the gold rush of 1849, then with its fertile agricultural lands, and finally with its high-technology leadership.
Field of California poppies, circa 1910.
Pre-Columbian history
Yosemite valley, as seen upon first emerging from the tunnel
The coast of California was an inviting pathway even for the earliest inhabitants of North America. The remains of Arlington Springs Woman on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early inhabitation, dated to the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation) about 13,000 years ago.
When the first European explorers and settlers appeared, they found many Native American tribes living in the pristine land of oak woodlands, grassy hills, and broad beaches — in what is now California. Among the tribes were the Ohlone, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Chumash, and Maidu. California holds a variety of unique biosystems and each tribe specialized according to the particular environment. Coastal tribes were a major source of trading beads (wampum), which were produced from mussel shells using stone tools, while those in the northern Cascade Range traded obsidian, used for arrowheads, axe heads, and knives. Tribes in the Sierra Nevada foothills collected acorns from oak trees, ground them, and leached out the acidic tannin to make the flour edible.
European Exploration
João Rodrigues Cabrilho
The first European to explore the coast of the present day State of California, was João Rodrigues Cabrilho, a Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown who had been in the army of Cortes during the conquest of Mexico. In June 1542, Cabrillo led an expedition in two ships from the west coast of New Spain. He sailed northward and landed on September 28 at San Diego Bay, claiming all the lands south of Point Loma, at the mouth of the bay, for Spain. The expedition spent the winter anchored at one of the Channel Islands off the Southern Californian coast. Cabrillo died in early 1543, but the expedition continued under Bartolomé Ferrelo, who had been the chief pilot. Although other theories have been put forth, most historians accept that the expedition went no further north than Monterey Bay.
Sir Francis Drake
On June 17, 1579, Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere above Spain's most northerly claim at Point Loma. Drake found an excellent port, landed, repaired and restocked his vessels, then stayed for a time and kept friendly relations with the aboriginal natives. It is usually assumed that Drake's port was somewhere near the northern Bay Area — anywhere from Bodega to San Pablo Bay. A bronze plaque inscribed with Drake's claim to the new lands, fitting a description in Drake's own account, was discovered in Marin County. The so-called Drake's Plate of Brass was later declared a fraud. No one knows exactly where Drake's port was.
What is certain of the extent of Drake's claim and territorial challenge to Papacy and the Spanish crown is that his port was founded somewhere north of Point Loma; that all contemporary maps label all lands above the Kingdoms of New Spain and New Mexico "Nova Albion," and that all colonial claims made from the East Coast in the 1600s were "From Sea to Sea." The colonial claims were established with full knowledge of Drake's claims, which they reinforced, and remained valid when the colonies became free states. These territorial claims would later become important during the negotiations that ended the Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico.
Father Junípero Serra
Although the English were the first to establish claims to what is now the West Coast of the United States, Europeans virtually ignored the region for about 200 years. The chain of California missions and tiny settlements north of the Californian peninsula was an effort of the Church under the quiet leadership of Father Junípero Serra of the Franciscan religious order. The Spanish at the time were uninterested in the far north, and feared that any conquest beyond the Californian peninsula would set them in direct conflict with the English who were now sailing regularly into the Pacific.
However, owing to the calm vision of the Father Serra, Spanish authorities became convinced that ecclesiastical missions to the Indians of the north could succeed. Winning the backing he needed, Father Serra founded his first mission of San Diego de Alcalá at the top of the Californian peninsula in 1769. Later that year, the Spanish commander Gaspar de Portolá, leading a small military force, marched north out of California with Father Serra at the front. Boldly crossing Point Loma, they left the Spanish claim, and marching up the Pacific coast, they reached Monterey in 1770, where Serra founded the second mission, San Carlos Borromeo. Here father Serra made his headquarters (which were moved a year later to Carmel). Their route would later become the famous dirt trail, El Camino Real ("the King's Highway") which is now marked by bell-shaped street lights — where they have not been stolen. Today, a major highway, U.S. 101 (the "Pacific Highway"), roughly follows it.
Father Serra continued founding missions while walking barefoot from his headquarters in Carmel. The missions were placed one day's journey (by foot and mule) apart along El Camino Real. Commander Portolá became the first European proven to view San Francisco Bay, discovering it from the land. In 1776, the Mission San Francisco de Asís and the Presidio of San Francisco were founded. The Presidio was a small detachment at the entrance to the bay to protect it from American and English traders. Most missions remain or have been rebuilt in the original style, and many have congregations established since 1900. The highway and missions have become a romantic symbol of an idyllic and peaceful past.
Father Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988, and many Roman Catholics are pushing for his canonization (promotion to sainthood). However, some Native American groups have spoken out against this on the grounds that his missions enslaved their people. It was under Father Serra that so many places along the coast were named, including the name "California" itself, which before him had applied only to the peninsula now called Baja California.
The first secular settlements quickly followed, with pueblos (towns) founded in San José in 1777, Los Ángeles in 1781, and Branciforte (now Santa Cruz) in 1797. The town of Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) was founded in 1792 by British explorer George Vancouver, between the Presidio and Mission.
In the early 1800s, fur trappers of the Russian Empire, which had already claimed Alaska, briefly explored the coast, and set up trading posts as far south as Fort Ross. They hunted for seal pelts as far south as the Channel Islands across from modern Santa Barbara. A prominent marriage between a leading Californio family and an imperial noble almost caused Russian trade to advance into southern California. The scion from Russia, however, died of disease while crossing Siberia to get a dispensation from Russian Orthodox leaders to marry a Catholic. (His would-be bride entered a convent after his death).
To support the agricultural and pastoral work of the missions, the Spanish encouraged settlement with large land-grants, called ranchos, that largely remained empty of people. These were used for ranches with cattle and sheep. Hides for leather were to remain the primary export of California until the mid-19th century. The people of these ranchos were called rancheros.
The missions lasted almost 50 years, until Mexico declared independence in 1810 and the last mission was founded in 1821.
Mexican California
Spanish California lasted fifty years until Mexico's decade-long War of Independence ended in 1821. California, with so few people and so little development, became part of independent Mexico. The secular Mexican government, eager to reduce the power of the Church, confiscated all mission property almost immediately. The missions were abandoned, and many of the churches fell into ruins.
California Republic
Bear Flag Revolt
During the period of Mexican rule, American sailing companies maintained trade with Indians and gathered pelts, and in 1840 young Richard Henry Dana wrote of his own experiences aboard ship off California in the 1830s. Mexico paid little attention to its far-flung northern possession until June 1846, when American settlers in the Sacramento Valley revolted and raised the Bear Flag over Sonoma, establishing the California Republic. Thus ended the 22-year existence of the Territory of Alta California recognized by the 1824 Constitution of Mexico.
The Bear Flag was said to have been designed by a nephew of Abraham Lincoln, and it shows the unique golden Californian grizzly bear atop a single broad red stripe over a white field, evocative of the flag of England. Like the Bonnie Blue Flag flown in West Florida against the Spanish, it bears a single star.
In 1846, California had a Spanish-speaking population of 4,000—the population of a small village stretched along the rugged, 850-mile coastline. Before the Mexican-American War, this grew slowly with emigration mainly from the United States. The Republic, under President William B. Ide, applied to the U.S. for protection from Mexico and California entered the war on the side of the U.S.
Commodore John Drake Sloat, acting on instructions from Washington, D.C., ordered his naval troops to occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena to preserve order since war had broken out over the admission of Texas as a U.S. state. After 24 days, the Bear Flaggers joined the war effort and replaced the Bear Flag with the Stars and Stripes.
California and the Mexican-American War
During the war, a number of skirmishes were fought in southern California between Mexican troops and California Volunteers. Slightly later, the Republic applied to the U.S. for protection from Mexico. California and the territories that later became the states of Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico were surrendered by Mexico under the Mexican Cession of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
When looking at a map of California, the southern border does not run straight east to west, as other borders in the western U.S. do. Rather, it runs at an angle from Arizona to just south of San Diego Bay. American claims dating to colonial times and back to Sir Francis Drake, only went as far as south Point Loma — just north of the Bay's mouth. San Diego Bay is the only natural harbor in California south of San Francisco, 500 miles to the north. To claim all of this strategic Bay, the border was slanted to include it. Likewise, New Mexico was never part of any American claim. However, it lay sandwiched strategically between the republics of California and Texas, so it too was included. In an unusual step, the U.S. diplomatic team offered to pay Mexico the sum of USD $15 million for the lands already theirs by either prior claim or conquest.
Gold Rush
In 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills — at Sutter's Mill — about 40 miles east of Sacramento, beginning the California gold rush. John Sutter was a Swiss German settler who colonized an area around the Sacramento River and Sutter Creek, north and inland from the sparsely-settled Spanish land-grants. James W. Marshall, an American who was Sutter's carpenter, discovered the gold which started a gold rush of emigrants, mostly from the U.S.
The merchants supplying the miners settled in towns along what is now State Highway 49 , and especially in Sacramento (the state capital) and San Francisco. The nearest deep-water seaport, was San Francisco Bay, just inland from the narrow strait known as the "Golden Gate," and San Francisco became the home for new established bankers who financed exploration for gold. Gold is still found in many watersheds, in amounts near 3/4 oz. per ton, an amount that would be economical to mine, were it not for California's pollution laws, and a federal court's prohibition on hydraulic mining, which strips hills and mountains of all forests, vegetation, leaving behind huge barren mounds of tailings upstream from muddy, silt-dammed rivers for hundreds of miles to the sea.
USPS stamp depicting '49ers of California Gold Rush
The Gold Rush that began in 1849 permanently established California as a viable political entity. Before, the Rush, there were too few people there even to make it a state, which is one reason the military government was established. The far-away Pacific Coast should have be long in acquiring the population necessary to maintain a proper government. The Gold Rush changed all that and hundreds of thousands of people flocked there, walking the trails across the continent, or braving the 10,000-mile-long sail all the way around Cape Horn on South America.
Before California was formally admitted into the U.S. as part of the Compromise of 1850, it occupied an ambiguous place politically. Nominally a free Republic, it was overseen by a military governor for most of the period. It was not quite a republic, not quite a military district, and not quite a federal territory. Finally, on September 9, 1850, it was admitted in the Compromise of 1850 as a free state, but typically one senator agreed to support the slave states to maintain the balance in the Senate.
Statehood
State capitals
California officially became a state in 1850, and situated its first capital in San Jose. The city did not have facilities ready for a proper capital, and the winter of 1850 - 1851 was unusually wet, causing the dirt roads to become muddy streams. The legislature was unsatisfied with the location, so former General and State Senator Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo donated land in the future city of Vallejo for a new capital; the legislature convened there for one week in 1852 and again for a month in 1853. Again, the facilities available were unsuitable to house a state government, and the capital was soon moved three miles away to the little town of Benicia, inland from the San Francisco Bay. The strait links San Pablo Bay to Grizzly and Suisun Bays deep in the interior. A lovely brick statehouse was built in old American style complete with white cupola. Although strategically sited between the Gold Rush territory of the Sierra Foothills and the financial port of San Francisco, the site was too small for expansion, and so the capital was moved further inland past the Sacramento River Delta to the riverside port of Sacramento.
Sacramento was the site of John Sutter's large farm and his fort. The town was founded by John Sutter, Jr. while the elder Sutter was away, at the river's edge and downhill from the fort. Sutter Sr. was indignant since this place, shaded by water-needy Cottonwood trees, was often under water. Indeed, every hundred years or so, the whole Great Valley from Chico to Bakersfield, was one great freshwater sea. However, lots were already sold, so there the town of Sacramento stayed. At the end of the century, the streets were raised a full story, so buildings in Old Town are now entered through what were once doors to the balconies shading the sidewalks below.
California and the Civil War
California's role in the U.S. Civil War is one of the least researched areas of American and Californian history.
Before California was admitted into the U.S. in 1850, Californians were divided as to whether it should enter as a territory or as a state with a small population of 250,000. Northern California, which was dominated by mining, shipping, and commercial elites of San Francisco, favored becoming a state. However, Southern California, being exclusively of a rural character — of dry ranches and open range — favored becoming a territory. Further, the bulk of the state was at the time settled by Midwesterners and Southerners, whereas the seat of wealth and power in Northern California — San Francisco — was dominated by wealthy men from New England.
California was admitted as a free state, but one senator agreed to support the slave states in the Senate.
By 1859, the differences between the two halves of the state led to an agreement that southern California would split from California to form a new state. The vote passed in the legislature in 1859. The new state in the south was to have the name "Colorado," after the river flowing along its eastern edge. The split was also agreed upon in a popular referendum, but it left San Luis Obispo County attached to the south, but surrounded by the north. The legislature came upon a new division of the state that was acceptable to all, with the split to occur further north above the Tehachapi Mountains, in order to integrate San Luis Obispo County in its new state. Because the split was approved by both referendum and the legislature and also signed by the governor, it required only approval from the U.S. Congress. With the start of the Civil War, Congress never considered the proposal.
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election in California with only a 734 vote plurality.[1]
The first Republican elected governor of California was Leland Stanford on September 4, 1861. [2]
| 1861 Gubernatorial Candidate | Party | Popular Vote | %
|
| Leland Stanford | Republican | 56,056 | 46.4
|
| John R. McConnell | Southern Democrat | 33,750 | 28.0
|
| John Conness | Northern Democrat | 30,944 | 25.6
|
Lincoln later won the 1864 election with almost 59% in California. [3]
| 1864 Presidential Candidate | Party | Popular Vote | %
|
| Abraham Lincoln | Republican | 62,053 | 58.6
|
| George B. McClellan | Northern Democrat | 43,837 | 41.4
|
Following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, several units of Confederate volunteers were sworn in under the supervision of public officials such as sheriffs and judges, most notably in Los Angeles and San Diego counties in the south, and Sonoma County in the north. Most famous among these is the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, which included more than a few volunteers with Spanish last names. Lincoln immediately sent 15,000 troops from Massachusetts to prevent the volunteers from reaching the east. Lincoln called these his "California Column," indicating their field of operations -- not their state of origin. However, thousands of Californians made it across the Colorado River into the Confederate Territory of Arizona, including the California Greys and the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles -- who disbanded when they reached their goal of the Arizonan Territorial capital of Mesilla (now in New Mexico). They had crossed the Colorado July 4, 1861. The volunteers joined up principally with Texas Regiments.
Not only was the American population of California predominantly non-Republican, but the Californio population was even more so. The Californios claimed to identify with the slower and more genteel ways of the rural South than with the fast-paced commercial interests of the Northeast. Further, many of them were unhappy with their treatment at the hands of wealthy "Yankees." Thus, many of them joined the fight in the east, and fought with the Confederacy.
At the time of the War's outbreak, federal troops were under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston headquartered at Benicia. General Johnston strongly believed that the South represented the cause of freedom, and traditional American democracy of popular sovereignty. The Southern sympathizers in the state made plans to secede with Oregon to form a "Pacific Republic." Their plans rested on the cooperation of General Johnston. Johnston understood this, and met with the men, but he declined. He said he had sworn an oath to defend the Union, and although he believed that Lincoln had violated and destroyed the Constitution holding the Union together, he would not go against his word. Thus the plans for California to secede from the United States never came to fruition. Johnston soon resigned his commission and joined the fight in the east as a general with the Confederacy, where he was killed in battle.
Eighty-eight battles of various sizes were fought in California, many of them seeking to capture gold for the Confederacy. Most of the fights were guerrilla battles, or in the terminology of the day, battles with "partisan rangers." Indeed, a few men left the guerillas under the command of the ruthless school teacher, William Quantrill, in Missouri, and came to California to train supporters there. One partisan warrior, Dan Showalter , once robbed a stagecoach of all its gold, leaving a receipt behind with the driver to keep him out of trouble with his bosses. The westernmost attack related to the U.S. Civil War occurred just outside downtown San Jose. A bronze historical plaque marking the site identifies it as a battle with "outlaws", rather than a battle of the American Civil War.
At this time, the U.S. had a number of military forts to defend against the Indians. Some were bereft of troops who were sent east to the war, such as Fort Tejon, which lies in the Tejon Pass, protecting San Joaquin Valley from the south and east. New forts were founded to protect ports and to hold Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, such as Fort MacArthur , at the head of San Pedro Bay and especially the coastal fortifications of San Diego and San Francisco Bays. Fort Tejon is now the site of Civil War reenactments of battles back east by descendants of the North and South. One Civil War-era fort, on a rocky island just inside the Golden Gate, later became an infamous Federal penitentiary, Alcatraz.
(Principal source for this section: Laurence Fletcher Talbott, PhD., California in the War for Southern Independence, (Los Angeles: Hale & Co, 1998). The late Dr. Talbott was a career professor at Cal. Poly. San Luis Obispo and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. [4])
California labor politics and the rise of racism
After the Civil War ended in 1865, California continued to grow. Independent miners were largely displaced by large corporate mining operations. Railroads began to be built, and both the railroad companies and the mining companies began to hire large numbers of laborers. Many of them were put out of work, when the mines and railroads took advantage of China's internal socioeconomic problems to recruit immigrant laborers who were disparagingly called "coolies."
The unemployed American laborers tended to riot when they lost their jobs, and the Chinese laborers rioted in response to mistreatment by both their employers and local bigots. From 1850 through 1900, anti-Chinese nativist sentiment resulted in the passage of innumerable racist laws, many of which remained in effect well into the middle of the 20th century.
The most flagrant episode was probably the creation and ratification of a new state constitution in 1879. Thanks to vigorous lobbying by the nativist Workingmen's Party, Article XIX, section 4 forbade corporations from hiring Chinese coolies, and empowered all California cities and counties to completely expel Chinese persons or to limit where they could reside. It would not be repealed until 1952.
The 1879 constitutional convention also dispatched a message to Congress pleading for strong immigration restrictions, which led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1889, and it would not be repealed by Congress until 1943.
Similar sentiments led to the development of an infamous Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan, by which Japan voluntarily agreed to restrict emigration to the United States. California also passed an Alien Land Act which barred aliens, especially Asians, from holding title to land. Because it was difficult for members of most Asian ethnic groups to obtain U.S. citizenship until the 1960s, the law effectively barred nearly all Asians from owning land in California until it was overturned by the California Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1952.
There was one upside amongst this bleak part of California history, though. In 1886, when a Chinese laundry owner challenged the constitutionality of a San Francisco ordinance clearly designed to drive Chinese laundries out of business, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, and in doing so, laid the theoretical foundation for modern equal protection constitutional law. See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).
Meanwhile, even with severe restrictions on Asian immigration, tensions between unskilled labor and wealthy landowners persisted up to and through the Great Depression (and in some areas, still persists). Novelist Jack London writes of the struggles of workers in the city of Oakland in his visionary classic, Valley of the Moon, a title evoking the pristine situation of Sonoma County between sea and mountains, Redwoods and Oaks, fog and sunshine. Not far away, Robert Louis Stevenson also settled for a time in California to recover his health near the hot mineral springs and geysers on the edge of Napa Valley.
The rise of the railroads
In 1871, the Supreme Court ruled against Santa Clara County in Santa Clara County v Union Pacific Railroad. The Court declared that a corporation henceforth could be considered an American citizen, with all the immunities and privileges associated (except the right to vote). This made it difficult for states to pass legislation to bring corporations accountable to the people.
The Trancontinental Railway, organized by The Big Four of Western railroading, and the Panama Canal created more permanent links to the east coast of the United States; the Spanish-American War established that the United States, would forsake their most cherished principles of the Old Republic, and would launch a career as an international capitalist power. Military bases were established to help protect the new U.S. possessions in the Philippines.
Feats of engineering
Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, there were several daring feats of engineering in Californian history. First is the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which runs from eastern California through the Mojave Desert and its Antelope Valley to dry Los Angeles far to the south. Finished in 1911, it was the brain-child of the self-taught William Mulholland and is still in use today. Creeks flowing from the eastern Sierra are diverted into the aqueduct. This attracts controversy from time to time since this withholds water from Mono Lake — an especially otherworldly and beautiful ecosystem — and from farmers in the Owens Valley. See also California Water Wars.
Other feats are the building of Hoover Dam (which is in Nevada, but provides power and water to Southern California), Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and the California Aqueduct, taking water from northern California to dry and sprawling southern California. Another project was the draining of Lake Tulare, which, during high water was the largest fresh-water lake inside an American state. This created a large wet area amid the dry San Joaquin Valley and swamps abounded at its shores. By the 1970s, it was completely drained, but it attempts to resurrect itself during heavy rains.
Land grants
An important development in the early twentieth century was the success of a series of lawyers who selfishly exploited differences between Spanish law and Anglo-Saxon common law to cut up the old Spanish land grants and acquire the land for themselves and their business allies. One famous seizure was the part of the Santa Ana grant that became the city of Anaheim, which was divided and eventually sold to German and American farmers. A number of other Spanish land-grants were protected for their owners for a time, notably Irvine Ranch in Orange County.
Twentieth Century
Oil, movies, and the military
Forest of oil rigs near LA.
NBC Radio City, Hollywood & Vine
In the 1920s, oil was discovered, first near Newhall, in northern Los Angeles County. Soon, more oil was found all over the L.A. Basin and other parts of California. It soon become the most profitable industry in the southern part of the state.
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of the studio system founded by industrious Polish Jews seeking a life in the land of opportunity. MGM, Universal and Warner Brothers all acquired land in Hollywood, which was then a small subdivision known as "Hollywoodland" on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Soon, Americans from all over the country, especially the Midwest, were attracted to the mild semi-arid climate, cheap land, and a wide variety of geography within a short drive by truck. Many westerns of this era were shot in the Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, wherein rises Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. Desert movies were shot in the Mojave or in Death Valley, the lowest point and hottest place in the western hemisphere. Pirate movies were shot in Carmel. Winter movies were shot in the San Bernardino Mountains. Movies set in the Mediterranean or the eastern U.S. were shot on location, or in outdoor sets on studio land, with simulated rain or snow as needed.
By the 1930s the show-biz population had extended its reach into radio, and by mid-century Southern California had also become a major center of television production, hosting studios for major networks such as NBC and CBS.
During World War II, California's mild climate became a major resource for the war effort. Numerous air-training bases were established in Southern California, where most aircraft manufacturers, including Douglas Aircraft and Hughes Aircraft expanded or established factories. Major naval, shipyards were established or expanded in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco Bay. San Francisco was the home of the liberty ships.
Baby boomers and free spirits
After the war, hundreds of land developers bought land cheap, subdivided it, built on it, and got rich. Real-estate development replaced oil and agriculture as Southern California's principal industry. In 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim. The population of California expanded dramatically, to nearly 20 million by 1970. This was the coming-of-age of the baby boom.
In the late 1960s the baby-boom generation reached draft age, and many risked arrest to oppose the war in Vietnam. There were numerous demonstrations and strikes, most famously on the prestigious Berkeley campus of the University of California, across the bay from San Francisco. In 1965, race riots erupted in Watts, in Los Angeles' South Central District. Some commentators predicted revolution. Then the federal government promised to withdraw from the Vietnam War, which at last happened in 1974. The radical political movements, having achieved a large part of their aim, lost members and funding.
California still was a land of free spirits, open hearts, easy-going living. Popular music of the period bore titles such as "California Dreamin'," "If You're Going to San Francisco, be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?", and "Hotel California." These reflected the Californian promise of easy living in a paradisiacal climate. The surfing culture burgeoned. Many took low-paying jobs and joined the surfers living in trailers at the beach and many others forsook ambition and joined the hippies free living in cities. Most famous of hippy hangouts was the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Cities, especially San Francisco, became famous for their gentility and tolerance. A distinctive and idyllic Californian culture emerged for a time. The peak of this culture, in 1967, was known as the Summer of Love. California became known elsewhere in the U.S. jokingly as the "land of fruits and nuts," but Californians themselves knew this as a pleasant life.
Economic power house
Conversely, during the same period, the Golden State also attracted commercial and industrial expansion of astronomical rates. By 1980, California became recognized as the world's eighth-largest economy. Millions of workers were needed to fuel the expansion. The high population of the time caused tremendous problems with urban sprawl, traffic, pollution, and, to a lesser extent, crime.
Urban sprawl created a backlash in many urban areas, with the local governments limiting growth beyond certain boundaries, reducing lot sizes for building homes, and so on. Open Space Districts were created in several parts of the state specifically to obtain, manage, and preserve undeveloped land. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the open space districts have created a nearly contiguous range of permanently undeveloped land running through the coastal range and hills surrounding the Bay's urban valleys, enabling the creation of huge natural parks and envisioning a hiking trail that will eventually circumnavigate the Bay in an unbroken loop.
The immense problem with air pollution (smog) that had developed by the early 1970s also caused a backlash. With schools being closed routinely in urban areas for "smog days" when the ozone levels became too unhealthy and the hills surrounding urban areas seldom visible even within a mile, Californians were ready for changes. Over the next three decades, California enacted some of the strictest antismog regulations in the United States and has been a leader in encouraging nonpolluting strategies for various industries, including automobiles. For example, car pool lanes normally allow only vehicles with two or more occupants, but electric cars can use the lanes with only a single occupant. As a result, smog is significantly reduced from its peak, although local Air Quality Management Districts still monitor the air and generally encourage people to avoid polluting activities on hot days when smog is expected to be at its worst.
Herald of the PE Railroad, the original light rail line
Traffic and transportation remain a problem in urban areas. Solutions are implemented, but inevitably the implementation expense and the time required to plan, approve, and build infrastructure can't keep pace with the population growth. There have been some improvements. Car pool lanes have become common in urban areas, which are intended to encourage people to drive together rather than in individual automobiles. San Jose is gradually building a light rail system (ironically, often over routes of an original turn-of-the-century electric railroad line that was torn out and paved over to encourage the advent of the automobile age). None of the implemented solutions are without their critics. The sprawling nature of the Bay Area and of the Los Angeles Basin makes it difficult to build mass transit that can reach and serve a significant portion of the population.
In the 1970s, the wars in southeast Asia inspired a new wave of newcomers from those countries, especially Viet Nam, many of whom settled in California. Most worked hard and lived under difficult circumstances. Little Saigons were established in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County.
High-tech expansion
Starting in the 1950s, high technology companies in Northern California began a spectacular growth that continued through the end of the century. The major products included personal computers, video games, and networking systems. The majority of these companies settled along a highway stretching from Palo Alto to San Jose, notably including Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California, all in the Santa Clara Valley, the so-called "Silicon Valley," named after the material used to produce the integrated circuits of the era. This era peaked in 2000, by which time demand for skilled technical professionals had become so high that the high-tech industry had trouble filling all of its positions and therefore pushed for increased visa quotas so that they could recruit from overseas. When the "Dot-Com bubble " burst in 2001, jobs evaporated overnight and, for the first time over the next two years, more people moved out of the area than moved in. This somewhat mirrored the collapse of the aerospace industry in southern california some twenty years earlier.
By 2004, it seemed that many of the coveted high-tech jobs are either "offshored" to India at ten percent of the labor costs in the U.S., or "onshored" by recruiting newcomers from among the billions in India and China. New laws have removed caps to visas, especially since the adoption of NAFTA. Tens of millions of people from the third world have entered the U.S. since 1960, settling at first mainly in California and the Southwest, but now throughout the continent. In 1960 (when the birth rate nearly equaled the replacement rate) the population of the U.S. was 180 million; in 2000, it was 280 million. By 2010, Hispanics might well be the majority of the population residing in California alone. This is perhaps the greatest population change in world history.
A victim of its own success?
Koreans in LA protest the Rodney King riots.
Although the air and pollution problems have become less visible because of new laws, health problems associated with pollution have continued to rise. The brown haze associated with nitrogen oxide from automobiles may have abated somewhat, but amounts of deadly ozone have grown. Respiratory allergies are near universal, and asthma is widespread. The crystal clear blue skies — trademarks of California 100 years ago — are long gone. Pollution from storm water drains began to kill organisms near the inhabited seacoast, inspiring numerous conservation organzations. The former paradisiacal lagoons at creek mouths along the coast have disappeared under urban building projects.
In the 1980s, power problems were again predicted, since nuclear power plants that had been projected were not built. Although California still had more power than it needed, executives of utility companies which were owned by or which associated with Enron allegedly conspired to artificially limit electricity supply in the state. The result in the spring and summer of 2000 was chaotic real-time manipulation of electricity distribution by commercial power utilities, manifested primarily in the rolling blackouts used by electricity providers such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company to prevent demand from exceeding supply. The issue has not been resolved as of 2004.
In the 1990s, a deadly (to grapevines, at least) phylloxera epidemic swept through California vineyards, devastating wine grapes, and causing billions of dollars of damage.
Still, the ongoing demand for skilled workers over the decades continues in the new millennium. Housing prices in urban areas have continued to increase at a pace faster than almost anywhere in the country, with occasional slow-downs or brief reversals during times of economic slow-down (Silicon Valley in the early 2000s seems to be an exception, with housing prices continuing to rise although unemployment is over 8%). An average home that, in the 1960s, cost $25,000, now costs half a million dollars or more in urban areas, such as in the San Francisco Bay Area and parts of the Los Angeles and San Diego regions. More people commute longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas.
State seal
The Great Seal of the State of California depicts the Goddess Minerva gazing over an idyll of mountains, oak trees and the mighty sea below—and gold. California, from north to south between the mountains and the sea, is covered with pastoral hills of green oaks and expanses of golden grass. California is known as the Golden State and for more than a century people have envisioned it as promising a life in paradise and prosperity.
Third millennium politics
In the 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Democratic incumbent Gray Davis defeated challenger Bill Simon with a plurality of 47.4%. Days after the election, Davis was accused of having hidden a record $34.6 billion budget deficit. Davis' approval rating dropped to 24%, the lowest ever in the history of the California Field Poll . Nearly two million Californians signed petitions calling for a recall election against Davis. The effort against Davis marked the first time since the 1911 inclusion of a recall clause into the State Constitution that a California governor faced a recall election. There had been 31 attempts in that time.
There were two parts to the recall ballot. The first part asked whether Davis should be recalled. The second part asked, if the recall occurred, which candidate other than Davis should be the new governor. 135 candidates ran to replace Davis.
On October 7, 2003, Davis was successfully recalled, with 55.4% of the voters supporting the recall (see results of the 2003 California recall). With a plurality of 48.6% of the vote, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was chosen as the new governor. Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante received 31.5% of the vote, and Republican State Senator Tom McClintock received 13.5% of the vote.
See also: History of Los Angeles, California, San Francisco, California#History
See also
