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The
article tells the story of California from the time
that immigrants from Asia began arriving some 13,000
years ago, and perhaps earlier. It tells of the
exploration of the coasts and inland valleys by
European explorers, the rapid influx of
fortune-hunters and adventurers beginning with the
California Gold Rush
in the 1850s, and ends in 1899 with a largely
agricultural and rural California with a population
of some 1.4 million people.
Before European contact
The
circumstances of the arrival of the first humans in
California remain a mystery. In all, some 30 tribes (or
culture groups) lived in the area of present-day California,
gathered into perhaps six different language family groups.
These groups included the early-arriving
Hokan family (winding up in the mountainous far north
and Colorado River basin in the south), and the recently
arrived Uto-Aztekan of the desert
southeast. This cultural diversity was among the densest in
North America, and was likely the result of a series of
migrations and invasions during the last 10,000-15,000
years.
While the
general consensus is that California was populated by groups
of humans coming over the Bering
Strait from Asia, the details of these groups’ passage
and arrival are unknown. The remains of
Arlington Springs Man
on Santa Rosa
Island are among the traces of a very early habitation,
dated to the last ice age (Wisconsin
glaciation) about 13,000 years ago. At the time of the
first European contact,
Native
American tribes included the
Chumash,
Maidu, Miwok,
Modoc,
Mohave, Ohlone,
Shasta, and
Tongva.
Tribes
adapted to California’s many climates. Coastal tribes were a
major source of trading beads, produced from
mussel shells using stone tools.
Tribes in California's broad
Central Valley
and the surrounding foothills developed an early agriculture,
burning the grasslands to encourage growth of edible wild
plants, especially oak trees. The
acorns from these trees were pounded
into a powder, and the acidic tannin
leached out to make edible flour. Tribes living in the
mountains of the north and east relied heavily on salmon and
game hunting, and used California’s volcanic legacy by
collecting and shaping obsidian for
themselves and for trade. The deserts of the southeast were
home to tribes who learned to thrive in that harsh
environment, by making careful use of local plants and
living in oases and along water courses.
The status
of all these people remained dynamic, as the more successful
tribes expanded their territories, and less successful
tribes contracted. Slave-trading and war among tribes
alternated with periods of relative peace. In all, it is
estimated by the time of extensive European contact in the
1700s, that perhaps 300,000 Native Americans were living
within what is now California.
European exploration (1530 –
1765)
The first
European explorers, flying the flags of
Spain and of England, sailed
along the coast of California from the early 1500s to the
mid-1700s, but no European settlements were established. The
most important colonial power, Spain, focused attention on
its imperial centers in Mexico,
Peru, and the
Philippines. Confident of Spanish claims to all lands
touching the Pacific Ocean (including
California), Spain simply sent an occasional exploring party
sailing along the California coast. The California seen by
these ship-bound explorers was one of hilly grasslands and
forests, with few apparent resources or natural ports to
attract colonists.
The other
colonial states of the era, with their interest on more
densely populated areas, paid limited attention to this
distant part of the world. It was not until the middle of
the 1700s, that both Russian
and British explorers and fur-traders began encroaching on
the margins of the area.
Hernán Cortés
About 1530,
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán
(President of New Spain) was told
by an Indian slave of the
Seven Cities of Cibola that had streets paved with gold
and silver. About the same time, Hernán Cortés was attracted
by stories of a wonderful country far to the northwest,
populated by Amazonish women and
abounding with gold, pearls, and gems. The Spaniards
conjectured that these places may be one and the same.
An
expedition in 1533 discovered a bay, most likely that of
La Paz, before
experiencing difficulties and returning. Cortés accompanied
expeditions in 1534 and 1535 without finding the
sought-after city.
On
May 3, 1535, Cortés
claimed "Santa Cruz Island" (now known as the peninsula of
Baja California), and laid
out and founded the city that was to become LaPaz later that
spring.
Francisco de Ulloa
In July
1539, moved by the renewal of those stories, Cortés sent
Francisco de Ulloa out with three small vessels. He made it
to the mouth of the Colorado, then sailed around the
peninsula as far as Cedros Island.
The account
of this voyage marks the first recorded application of the
name "California". It can be traced to the fifth volume of a
chivalric romance, Amadis de Gallia, arranged by
Garci Rodríguez de
Montalvo and first printed around 1510, in which a
character travels through an island called "California".
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
The first
European to explore the coast was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a
Portuguese navigator sailing for the
Spanish Crown. In June, 1542
Cabrillo led an expedition in two ships from the west coast
of what is now Mexico. He landed on
September 28 at San Diego Bay,
claiming what he thought was the
Island of California for
Spain.
Cabrillo
and his crew landed on San Miguel,
one of the Channel
Islands, then continued north in an attempt to discover
a supposed coastal route to the mainland of
Asia. Cabrillo likely sailed as far north as
Pt. Reyes (north of San Francisco),
but died as the result of an accident during this voyage;
the remainder of the expedition, which likely reached as far
north as the Rogue River
in today's southern Oregon was led by
Bartolomé Ferrelo.
Sir Francis Drake
On June 7
1579, the English explorer Sir
Francis Drake saw an excellent port, which he called
Nova Albion and claimed for England. The location remains
unknown and there was no follow-up.
Sebastián Vizcaíno
In 1602,
the Spaniard Sebastián Vizcaíno explored California's
coastline as far north as Monterey
Bay, where he put ashore. He ventured inland south along
the coast, and recorded a visit to what is likely
Carmel Bay. His major
contributions to the state's history were the glowing
reports of the Monterey area as an anchorage and as land
suitable for settlement, as well as the detailed charts he
made of the coastal waters (which were used for nearly 200
years).
European exploration (1765 –
1821)
British
seafaring Captain James Cook,
midway through his third and final voyage of exploration in
1778, sailed along the west coast of
North America aboard the
HMS Resolution,
mapping the coast from California all the way to the
Bering Strait. In 1786
Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, led a
group of scientists and artists on a voyage of exploration
ordered by Louis XVI and were
welcomed in Monterey. They compiled an account of the
Californian mission system, the land and the people. Traders,
whalers and scientific missions followed in the next
decades.
Spanish colonization and
governance (1697 – 1821)
In 1697 the
Jesuit missionary Juan
María de Salvatierra established
Misión
de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó, the first permanent
mission in Baja California
Sur. The California territory at this time was part of
New Spain, and not divided as it is
today. Jesuit control over the peninsula was gradually
extended, first in the region around
Loreto, then to the south in the Cape region, and
finally toward the north across the northern boundary of
Baja California Sur. By 1765, 21 missions were established
in California.
During the
last quarter of the 18th century, the first
Spanish settlements were
established in Alta California.
Reacting to interest by Russia and
possibly Great Britain in the
fur-bearing animals of the Pacific north coast, Spain
further extended the series of Catholic missions,
accompanied by troops and establishing ranches, along the
southern and central coast of California. These missions
were intended to demonstrate the claim of the
Spanish Empire to modern-day
California.
The first
quarter of the 19th century continued the slow colonization
of the southern and central California coast by Spanish
missionaries,
ranchers, and
troops. By 1820, Spanish influence was marked by the
chain of missions reaching from Loreto, north to
San Diego to just north of today's
San Francisco Bay area, and
extended inland approximately 25 to 50 miles from the
missions. Outside of this zone, perhaps 200,000 to 250,000
Native Americans were continuing to lead traditional lives.
The Adams-Onís Treaty,
signed in 1819 set the northern boundary of the Spanish
claims at the 42nd parallel, effectively creating today's
northern boundary between California and Oregon.
First Spanish colonies
Spain had
maintained a number of missions and presidios throughout
New Spain since 1493. The Crown
laid claim to the north costal provinces of
California since
1542. Excluding Santa Fe in New
Mexico, it was slow in settlement for 155 years. Although
establishments officially beginning in
Loreto, Baja California
Sur were established in 1697, It
wasn't until the threat of an incursion by Russia, coming
down from Alaska in 1765, that King
Charles III of Spain
felt development of more northern installations were
necessary. By then the Spanish
Empire was engaged in the political aftermath of the
Seven Years' War and
colonial priorities in far away California afforded only a
minimal effort. Alta California
was to be settled by Franciscan
monks, protected by troops in the
California Missions.
Between 1774 and 1791,
the Crown sent forth a number of expeditions to further
explore and settle Alta
California and the Pacific
Northwest.
Gaspar de Portolà
In May
1768, the Spanish Visitor General,
José de Gálvez, planned a four-prong expedition to
settle Alta California, two by sea and two by land, which
Gaspar de Portolà volunteered to command.
The Portolà
land expedition arrived at the site of present-day
San Diego on
June 29, 1769,
where it established the
Presidio of San Diego. Eager to press on to Monterey Bay,
de Portolà and his group, consisting of Father
Juan Crespi, sixty-three
leather-jacket soldiers and a hundred mules, headed north on
July 14. They moved quickly, reaching
the present-day sites of Los Angeles on
August 2, Santa
Monica on August 3,
Santa Barbara on August 19,
San Simeon on
September 13 and the mouth of
the Salinas River on
October 1. Although they were
looking for Monterey Bay, the
group failed to recognize it when they reached it.
On
October 31, de Portolà's explorers
became the first Europeans known to view
San Francisco Bay.
Ironically, the Manila Galleons
had sailed along this coast for almost 200 years by then.
The group returned to San Diego in 1770.
Junípero Serra
Junípero
Serra was a Majorcan (Spain)
Franciscan who founded the
Alta California
mission chain.
After King Carlos III ordered the
Jesuits expelled from "New
Spain" on February 3,
1768, Serra was named "Father
Presidente."
Serra
founded San Diego de
Alcalá in 1769. Later that year, Serra, Governor de
Portolà and a small group of men moved north, up the
Pacific Coast. They reached
Monterey in 1770, where
Serra founded the second Alta California mission,
San Carlos
Borromeo.
Alta California missions
The
California Missions comprise a series of
religious outposts established by
Spanish
Catholic Dominicans,
Jesuits, and
Franciscans, to spread the
Christian doctrine among the local
Native
Americans, but with the added benefit of confirming
historic Spanish claims to the area. The missions introduced
European
livestock, fruits,
vegetables, and
industry into the
California region.
Most
missions were small, with normally two Franciscans and six
to eight soldiers in residence. All of these buildings were
built largely with unpaid native labor under Franciscan
supervision. In addition to the presidio (royal fort)
and pueblo (town), the misión was one of the
three major agencies employed by the Spanish crown in an
attempt to consolidate its colonial
territories. None of these missions were completely
self-supporting, requiring continued (albeit modest)
financial support. Starting with the onset of the
Mexican War of
Independence in 1810, this support largely disappeared
and the missions and their converts were left on their own.
In order to
facilitate overland travel, the mission settlements were
situated approximately 30 miles (48 kilometers) apart, so
that they were separated by one day's long ride on horseback
along the 600-mile (966-kilometer) long
El Camino Real (Spanish
for "The Royal Highway," though often referred to as "The
King's Highway"), and also known as the California
Mission Trail. Heavy freight movement was practical only
via water. Tradition has it that the padres sprinkled
mustard seeds along the trail
in order to mark it with bright yellow flowers.
Four
presidios, strategically placed along the California coast
and organized into separate
military districts,
served to protect the missions and other Spanish settlements
in Upper California.
A number of
mission structures survive today or have been rebuilt, and
many have congregations established since the beginning of
the 20th century. The highway and missions have become for
many a romantic symbol of an idyllic and peaceful past. The
"Mission
Revival Style" was an architectural movement that drew
its inspiration from this idealized view of California's
past.
Ranchos
The Spanish
(and later the Mexicans) encouraged settlement with large
land grants which were turned into ranchos, where cattle and
sheep were raised. Cow hides (at roughly $1 each) and fat
(known as tallow, used to make candles as well as soaps)
were the primary exports of California until the mid-19th
century. The owners of these ranchos styled themselves after
the landed gentry in Spain.
Their workers included some Native Americans who had learned
to speak Spanish and ride horses.
Russian attempts at
colonization
Beginning
in the early 1800s, fur trappers of the
Russian Empire explored the
West Coast, hunting for sea otter
pelts as far south as San Diego. In August of 1812 the
Russian-American Company
set up a fortified trading post at Fort
Ross, near present day Bodega Bay
on the Sonoma Coast sixty miles
north of San Francisco on land claimed, but not occupied by,
Great Britain. This colony was active until 1841.
El Presidio de Sonoma, or
Sonoma Barracks, was established in 1836 by
Mariano Guadalupe
Vallejo (the "Commandante-General of the Northern
Frontier of Alta California") as a part of
Mexico's strategy to halt Russian
incursions into the region.
Mexican era (1821-1846)
General
Substantial
changes occurred during the second quarter of the 19th
century. Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 marked the
end of European rule in California; the missions faded in
importance under Mexican control while ranching and trade
increased. By the mid-1840s, the increased presence of
Americans made the northern part of the state diverge from
southern California, where the Spanish-speaking "Californios"
dominated.
By 1846,
California had a Spanish-speaking population of under
10,000, tiny even compared to the sparse population of
states in Mexico proper. The "Californios," as they
were known, consisted of about 800 families, mostly
concentrated on a few large ranchos. About 1,300 Americans
and a very mixed group of about 500 Europeans, scattered
mostly from Monterey to Sacramento dominated trading as the
Californios dominated ranching. In terms of adult males, the
two groups were about equal, but the Americans were more
recent arrivals.
Secularization
The
Mexican Congress passed
An Act for the Secularization of the Missions of California
on August 17, 1833.
Mission San Juan
Capistrano was the very first to feel the effects of
this legislation the following year. The Franciscans soon
thereafter abandoned the missions, taking with them most
everything of value, after which the locals typically
plundered the mission buildings for construction materials.
Other nationalities
-
In this
period, American and British trappers began entering
California in search of beaver. Using the
Siskiyou Trail,
Old Spanish Trail, and
later, the California Trail,
these trapping parties arrived in California, often
without the knowledge or approval of the Mexican
authorities, and laid the foundation for the arrival of
later Gold Rush era
Forty-Niners, farmers and
ranchers.
-
The
leader of a French scientific expedition to California,
Eugene Duflot de Mofras, wrote in 1840 "...it is evident
that California will belong to whatever nation chooses
to send there a man-of-war and
two hundred men." In 1841, General Vallejo wrote
Governor Alvarado that "...there is no doubt that France
is intriguing to become mistress of California," but a
series of troubled French governments did not uphold
French interests in the area. During disagreements with
Mexicans, the German-Swiss
Francophile John Sutter
threatened to raise the French flag over California and
place himself and his settlement,
New Helvetia, under French
protection.
American interest and
immigrants
Although a
small number of American traders and trappers had lived in
California since the early 1830s, the first organized
overland party of American immigrants was the
Bidwell-Bartleson party of 1841. With mules and on foot,
this pioneering group groped their way across the continent
using the still untested
California Trail. Also in 1841, an overland exploratory
party of the
United States Exploring Expedition came down the
Siskiyou Trail from the
Pacific Northwest. In 1844, Caleb
Greenwood guided the first settlers to take wagons over
the Sierra Nevada. In 1846, the misfortunes of the
Donner Party earned notoriety as
they struggled to enter California.
By 1846,
the province had a non-Native American population of about
1500 Californio adult men (with about 6500 women and
children), who lived mostly in the southern half. About
2,000 recent immigrants (almost all adult men) lived mostly
in the northern half of California.
United States era (beginning
1846)
Bear Flag Revolt and American
conquest
When war
was declared on May 13,
1846 between the United States and
Mexico, it took almost two months (mid-July 1846) for
definite word of war to get to California. U.S. consul
Thomas O. Larkin, stationed
in Monterey, on hearing rumors of war tried to keep peace
between the Americans and the small Mexican military
garrison commanded by José Castro. American army captain
John C. Frémont with about 60
well-armed men had entered California in December 1845 and
was making a slow march to Oregon when they received word
that war between Mexico and the U.S. was imminent.
On
June 15, 1846,
some 30 non-Mexican settlers, mostly Americans, staged a
revolt and seized the small Mexican garrison in
Sonoma. They raised the "Bear
Flag" of the California
Republic over Sonoma. It lasted one week until the U.S.
Army, led by Fremont, took over on June
23. The California state flag today is based on this
original Bear Flag, and continues to contain the words "California
Republic."
Commodore
John Drake Sloat, on hearing
of imminent war and the revolt in Sonoma, ordered his naval
forces to occupy Yerba Buena (present
San Francisco) on
July 7 and raise the American flag. On
July 15, Sloat transferred his
command to Commodore Robert F.
Stockton, a much more aggressive leader. Commodore
Stockton put Frémont's forces under his orders. On July
19th, Frémont's "California Battalion" swelled to about 160
additional men from newly arrived settlers near Sacramento,
and he entered Monterey
in a joint operation with some of Stockton's sailors and
marines. The official word had been received -- the
Mexican-American War was
on. The American forces easily took over the north of
California; within days they controlled San Francisco,
Sonoma, and Sutter's Fort in Sacramento.
In Southern
California, Mexican General José
Castro and Governor Pío Pico
fled from Los Angeles. When Stockton's forces entered
Los Angeles unresisted on
August 13, 1846,
the nearly bloodless conquest of California seemed complete.
Stockton, however, left too small a force (36 men) in Los
Angeles, and the Californios,
acting on their own and without help from Mexico, led by
José Mariá Flores , forced
the small American garrison to retire in late September. 200
Reinforcements sent by Stockton, led by US Navy Capt
William Mervine were repulsed
in the Battle of
Dominguez Rancho October 7
through October 9,
1846, near San Pedro, where 14
US Marines were killed. Meanwhile,
General Kearny with a much reduced squadron of 100 dragoons
finally reached California after a grueling march across New
Mexico, Arizona and the Sonora desert. On December 6, 1846,
They fought the Battle of
San Pasqual near San Diego, California, where 18 of
Kearny's troop were killed--the largest American casualties
lost in battle in California.
Stockton
rescued Kearny's surrounded forces and with their combined
force, they moved northward from San Diego, entering the Los
Angeles area on January 8,
1847, linking up with Frémont's men and
with American forces totaling 660 troops, they fought the
Californios in the
Battle of Rio San Gabriel and the next day, on
January 9, 1847,
they fought the Battle of La
Mesa. Three days later, on January
12, 1847, the last significant body
of Californios surrendered to American forces. That marked
the end of the War in California. On
January 13, 1847, the
Treaty of Cahuenga was
signed.
On
January 28, 1847,
Army lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman and his army unit
arrived in Monterey, California as American forces in the
pipeline continued to stream into California. On
March 15, 1847,
Col. Jonathan D. Stevenson’s Seventh Regiment of New York
Volunteers of about 900 men start arriving in California.
All of these men were in place when gold was discovered in
January 1848.
The
Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, signed on February 2,
1848, marked the end of the
Mexican-American War. In that treaty, the United States
agreed to pay Mexico $18,250,000; Mexico formally ceded
California (and other northern territories) to the United
States, and a new international boundary was drawn; San
Diego Bay is one of the only natural harbors in California
south of San Francisco, and to claim all this strategic
water, the border was slanted to include it.
Gold Rush
In January
1848, gold was discovered at
Sutter's Mill in the
Sierra Nevada foothills
about 40 miles east of
Sacramento — beginning the
California Gold Rush,
which had the most extensive impact on population growth of
the state of any era
The miners
and merchants settled in towns along what is now State
Highway 49, and settlements sprang up along the
Siskiyou Trail as gold was
discovered elsewhere in California (notably in
Siskiyou County). The nearest
deep-water seaport was San
Francisco Bay, and San Francisco became the home for
bankers who financed exploration for gold.
The Gold
Rush brought the world to California. By 1855, some 300,000
"Forty-Niners" had
arrived from every continent; many soon left, of
course--some rich, most not very rich. A precipitous drop in
the Native American population occurred in the decade after
the discovery of gold.
Statehood: 1849-1850
In 1847-49
California was run by the U.S. military; local government
continued to be run by alcaldes (mayors) in most places; but
now some were Americans. Bennett Riley, the last military
governor, called a constitutional convention to meet in
Monterey in September 1849. Its 48 delegates were mostly
pre-1846 American settlers; 8 were Californios. They
unanimously outlawed slavery and set up a state government
that operated for 10 months before California was given
official statehood by Congress on
September 9, 1850 as part of the
Compromise of 1850.
A series of small towns including Benicia were used briefly
as the state capital until finally Sacramento was selected
in 1854.
The Civil War
Because of
the distance factor, California played a minor role in the
American Civil War.
Although some settlers sympathized with the Confederacy,
they were not allowed to organize and their newspapers were
closed down. Former Senator William
Gwin, a Confederate sympathizer, was arrested and fled
to Europe. Powerful capitalists dominated in Californian
politics through their control of mines, shipping, and
finance controlled the state through the new Republican
party. Nearly all the men who volunteered as soldiers stayed
in the West to guard facilities. Some 2,350 men in the
California Column marched
east across Arizona in 1862 to expel the Confederates from
Arizona and New Mexico. The California Column spent most of
its energy fighting hostile Indians.
Labor
In his
maiden speech before the United States Senate, California
Senator David C. Broderick stated, "There is no place in the
Union, no place on earth, where labor is so honored and so
well rewarded..." as in California. Early immigrants to
California came with skills in many trades and some had come
from places where workers were being organized. California's
labor movements began in San
Francisco, the only large city in California for decades
and once the center of trade-unionism west of the Rockies.
Los Angeles remained an open-shop stronghold for half a
century until unions from the north collaborated to make
California a union state. Because of San Francisco's
relative isolation, skilled workers could make demands that
their counterparts on the East coast could not. Printer's
first attempted to organize in 1850, teamsters, draymen,
lightermen, riggers and stevedores in 1851, bakers and
bricklayers in 1852, caulkers, carpenters, plasterers,
brickmasons, blacksmiths and shipwrights in 1853 and
musicians in 1856. all these efforts required several starts
to become stabilized, they did earn better pay and working
conditions and began the long efforts of state labor
legislation. Between 1850 and 1870, legislation making
provisions for payment of wages, the mechanic's lien and the
eight hour day. It was said that during the last half of the
nineteenth century more San Francisco worker's enjoyed an
eight hour day than any other American city. The molders'
and boilermakers' strike of 1864 was called in opposition to
a newly formed iron-works employers association which
threatened a one thousand dollar a day fine on any employer
who granted the strikers' demands and had wired for
strikebreakers across the country. The
San
Francisco Trades Union, the city's first central labor
body sent a delegation to meet a boatload of strikebreakers
at Panama and educated them. They arrived in San Francisco
as enrolled members.
After the
Civil War ended in 1865, California continued to grow
rapidly. 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. The decisive event
was the opening of the transcontinental railroad in 1869;
six days by train brought a traveler from Chicago to San
Francisco, compared to six months by ship. The era of
comparative protection for California labor ended with the
arrival of the Railroad. For decades after labor oppressed
the Chinese and politicians pushed anti-Chinese legislation.
Importation
of slaves or so-called "contract" labor was fought by miners
and city workers and made illegal through legislation in
1852.
The first
statewide federated labor body was the Mechanics' State
Council that champooned the eight-hour day against the
employers 1867 "Ten Hour League". the Mechanics' State
Council affiliated with the
National Labor Union. America's first national union
effort. By 1872 Chinese workers comprised half of all
factory workers in San Francisco and were paid wages far
below white workers. "The Chinese must Go!" was the slogan
of Dennis Kearney, a prominent labor leader in San
Francisco. He appeared on the scene in 1877 and led sand lot
vigilantes that roamed the city beating Chinese and wrecking
their businesses.
Two times
the seamen of the west coast had tried to organize a union,
but were defeated. In 1875, the Seaman's Protective
Association was established and began the struggle for wages
and conditions on ships. The effort was joined by
Henry George, editor of the San
Francisco Post. The legislative struggle to enforce laws
against brutal ship's captains and the requirement that two
thirds of sailors be Americans was proposed and the effort
was carried for thirty years by
Andrew Furuseth and the
Sailor's Union of
the Pacific after 1908, and the
International Seamen's Union of America. The
Coast's
Seamen's Journal was founded in 1887, for years the most
important labor journal in California.
Concurrently, waterfront organizing led to the
Maritime Federation of the Pacific.
Labor politics and the rise of
Nativism
Thousands
of Chinese men arrived in California to work as laborers,
recruited by industry as low wage workers. Over time,
conflicts in the gold fields and cities created prejudices
between white and Chinese laborers. The decade long
depression after the Railroad was completed, white workers
began to lay blame on the Chinese laborers. Many Chinese
were expelled from the mine fields. Some returned to China
after the Central Pacific was built. Those who stayed mostly
moved to the Chinatown in San Francisco and a few other
cities, where they were relatively safe from violent attacks
they suffered elsewhere.
From 1850
through 1900, anti-Chinese nativist
sentiment resulted in the passage of innumerable 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 anti-Chinese Workingmen's Party,
led by Dennis Kearney (an
immigrant from Ireland), 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 was repealed
in 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 the
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 people born in Asia to obtain U.S. citizenship
until the 1960s, land ownership titles were held by their
American-born children, who were full citizens. The law was
overturned by the
California Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1952.
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. SMeanwhile, even with severe
restrictions on Asian immigration, tensions between
unskilled workers and wealthy landowners persisted up to and
through the Great Depression. 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.
Rise of the railroads
The
establishment of America's
transcontinental rail
lines permanently linked
California to the rest of the country, and the
far-reaching transportation systems that grew out of them
during the century that followed contributed immeasurably to
the state’s unrivaled social, political, and economic
development.
Labor
The labor
history of California remained centered in the
San Francisco for much of the
state's early history. By the opening decades of the
twentieth century, labor efforts had expanded to
Los Angeles,
Long Beach and the
Central Valley.
In 1901, the San Francisco based
City Front
Federation was reputed to be the strongest trade
federation in the country and it grew out of intense
organizational drives in every trade during the boom at the
turn of the century. Employers organized as well during the
building trades strike of 1900 and the (San Francisco) City
Front Federation strike of 1901, which led to the founding
of Building
Trades Council. The open shp question was at stake. Out
of the City Front strike came the
Union Labor Party
because worker's were angry at the mayor for putting police
up to protecting strikebreakers.
Eugene Schmitz was elected mayor in 1902 on the party's
ticket, making San Francisco the only town in the United
States, for a time, to be run by labor. A combination of
corruption and unscrupulous reformers culminated in graft
prosecutions in 1907.
In 1910,
Los Angeles was still an open shop and employers in the
north threatened for a new push to open San Francisco shops.
Responding, labor sent delegations south in June, 1910.
National organizers were sent in during a lockout of 1,200
idled metal-trades workers. Then occurred an incident that
would set back Los Angeles organizing for years, On October
10, 1910, a bomb exploded at the plant of the Los Angeles
TIMES, killing twenty-one workers.
In the
decade following, the rapid growth of the International
Workers of the World in ununionized trades, logging ,wheat
farming, lumber camps began extending its efforts to mines,
ports and agriculture. The IWW came to public notice after
the Wheatland Hop Riot
when a sheriff's posse broke up a protest meeting and four
persons died. It led to the first legislation protecting
field labor. The IWW was harmed by anti-union drives and
prosecution of members under the state's new criminal
syndacalism laws. The IWWw was present at the 1923 seamen's
strike at San Pedro, where Upton
Sinclair was arrested for reciting the Declaration of
Independence. However, the man who became the most prominent
wobbly of all, Thomas Mooney,
was soon to become a cause-celebre of labor and the most
important political prisoner in America.
The
Preparedness Day Bombing
killed ten people and hurt labor for decades. During the
1920s, the open shop efforts succeeded and the [[Industrial
Association of San Francisco raise over a million dollars to
break the building trades strikes in 1921 that led to the
collapse of the building trades unions when the employers
association cut wages twice in one year, and the Metal
Trades Council was defeated, losing an agreement that had
been in effect since 1907.The Seamen's Union too suffered
defeat in 1921 and the American
Plan took hold in San Francisco.
The labor
movement resurged in the 1930s, accompanied by the passage
of the 1933
National
Industrial Recovery Act and the emergence of a young
Australian worker, Harry Bridges,
within a few weeks after, in 1933, a charter had been
secured from
International Longshoreman's Association more than 90%
of workers on the waterfront had joined. The dock workers
took a strike vote on March 7, 1934. On May 15, 1934, the
seaman's unions voted to join the strike, followed by ship's
clerks and licensed officers' organizations. on July 5,
1934, the 1934
West Coast Waterfront Strike led to the killing of two
workers, the clubbing and gassing of hundreds, was known as
"bloody Thursday" and swept most of the California unions
into the general strike of 1934. The
Maritime Federation of the Pacific was organized in
1935.
San
Francisco in the late 1930s had 120,000 union members.
Longshoreman wore union buttons on their white union made
caps, Teamsters drove trucks as unionists, fishermen, taxi
drivers, streetcar conductors, motormen, newsboys, retail
clerks, hotel employees, newspapermen and bootlacks all had
representation. Against 30,000 trade union members in
1933-34, Los Angeles by the late thirties 200,000, even
against a severe 1938 anti-picketing ordinance. But Los
Angeles became unionized in the mass production industries
of aircraft, auto, rubber, oil and at the yards of
San Pedro. Later, drives for
unionization spread through musicians, teamsters, building
trades, movies, actors, writers and directors.
Farm labor
remained unorganized, the work brutal and underpaid. In the
1930s, 200,000 farm laborers traveled the state in tune with
the seasons. Unions were accused of an "inland march"
against landowners rights when they took up the early effort
to organize farm labor. A number of valley towns endorsed
anti-picketing ordinances to thwart organizing. In the
1933-1934 period, a wave of agricultural strikes flooded the
central valley, including the Imperial Valley lettuce strike
and San Joaquin Valley cotton strike. In the 1936 Salinas
lettuce strike, vigilante violence shocked the nation. Again,
in the spring of 1938, about three hundred men, women and
children were driven by vigilantes from their homes in Grass
Valley and Nevada City.
A
1938 ballot proposition against
picketing, proposition #1, considered fascist by
commentators for the state grange, became a huge political
struggle. proposition #1 failed at the polls. Soon, racist
distinctions fell as California unions began to admit
non-white members.
By the
advent of world war 2, California
had an old-age assistance law, unemployment compensation, a
48 hour maximum week law for women workers, an apprentice
law and workplace safety rules.
Examples of engineering
Beginning
at the turn of the twentieth
century, there were several feats of engineering in
Californian history. Among many, the first major engineering
was in mining, building and railroads. Much later, the
Los Angeles Aqueduct,
which runs from the Owens Valley,
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 attracted controversy in the 1960s, since
this withholds water from Mono Lake
— an especially otherworldly and beautiful ecosystem — and
from farmers in the Owens Valley.
Other feats
are the building of Hoover Dam (which
is in Nevada, but provides power and water to Southern
California), Hetch Hetchy
Reservoir, Shasta Dam, 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.
Automobile
travel became important after 1910. A key route was the
Lincoln Highway, which was
America's first transcontinental road for motorized vehicles,
connecting New York City to San Francisco. The creation of
the Lincoln Highway in 1913 was a major stimulus on the
development of both industry and tourism in the state.
Similar effects occurred in 1926 with the creation of
Route 66.
Oil, movies, and the military
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 became 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.
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
Mediterranean 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. In the 1934
Governor's election,
novelist Upton Sinclair was
the narrowly defeated Democratic nominee, running on the
programme of the socialist
EPIC Movement, a radical
response to the Great Depression.
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. In
1958, Major League Baseball's
Dodgers and
Giants left New York
City and came to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively.
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
the South-Central area of Los Angeles. The hippie riots on
the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles were also immortalized by
the Buffalo Springfield in "For What It's Worth." (1966).
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
Girls", "California
Dreamin'", "San Francisco", "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.
The most
famous hippie hangout was the
Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The state's
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. often derogatorily, and
with envy 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.
The adoption of a
Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 allowed the
development of a highly efficient system of public education
in the Community Colleges and the
University of California
and California State
University systems; by creating an educated workforce,
it attracted investment, particularly in areas related to
high technology. 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
anti-smog regulations in the United States and has been a
leader in encouraging nonpolluting strategies for various
industries, including automobiles. For example,
carpool lanes normally allow
only vehicles with two/three or more occupants (whether the
base number is two or three depends on what freeway you are
on), 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.
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.
Carpool 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 end of 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.
The California legal
revolution
During the
1960s, under the aegis of Chief Justice
Roger J. Traynor, California
became liberal and progressive, emphasizing the rights of
defendants even as the crime rate soared. Traynor's term as
Chief Justice (from 1964 to 1970) was marked by a number of
firsts: California was the first state to create true
strict liability in
product liability cases,
the first to allow the action of
negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) even
in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, and the
first to allow bystanders to sue for NIED where the only
physical injury was to a relative.
Starting in
the 1960s, California became a leader in
family law. California was the
first state to allow true
no-fault divorce, with the passage of the Family Law Act
of 1969. In 1994, the Legislature took family law out of the
Civil Code and created a new Family Code. In 2002, the
Legislature granted registered domestic partners the same
rights under state law as married spouses (although domestic
partners are still treated as unmarried cohabitants for many
purposes by federal law).
Since the
mid-1980s, the California Supreme Court has become more
conservative, particularly with regard to the rights of
criminal defendants. This is commonly seen as a reaction
against the strict anti-death
penalty stance of Chief Justice
Rose Bird in the early 1980s, which she maintained even
as violent crime soared to
record heights statewide. The state's outraged electorate
responded by removing her (and two of her anti-death penalty
allies) from the court in November of 1986.
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 were either "off-shored"
to India at ten percent of the labor costs in the U.S., or "on-shored"
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.
A victim of its own success?
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
organizations. 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.
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. 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.
Schwarzenegger began his shortened term with a soaring
approval rating and soon after began implementing a
conservative agenda. This initially resulted in sparring
with the heavily Democratic Assembly and Senate over the
state budget, battles which provided his infamous "girly
men" comment but also began taking their toll on his
approval rating. Schwarzenegger then embarked on a campaign
to enact several ballot propositions in a 2005 Special
Election touted as reforming California's budget system,
redistricting powers, and union political fundraising. The
union-led campaign spearheaded by the California Nurses
Association contributed heavily to the defeat of every
proposition in the Special Election. Since this conspicuous
failure, Schwarzenegger has made a turn back to the left,
criticizing the Bush Administration at many junctures,
reviving his environmental agenda, and compromising with the
legislature on the traditionally Democratic issue of
education spending. His approval rating has also been
revived, and was re-elected.
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