1.
History of California
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California was settled from the North by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years. It was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America, after contact with Spanish explorers, most of the Native Americans died out from European diseases. After the Portolà expedition of 1769–70, Spanish missionaries began setting up 21 California Missions on or near the coast of Alta California, during the same period, Spanish military forces built several forts and three small towns. Two of the pueblos would eventually grow into the cities of Los Angeles, after Mexican Independence was won in 1821, California fell under the jurisdiction of the First Mexican Empire. Fearing the influence of the Roman Catholic church over their newly independent nation and they left behind a small Californio population of several thousand families, with a few small military garrisons. After the Mexican–American War of 1846-48, Mexico was forced to relinquish any claim to California to the United States, the unexpected discovery of gold in 1849 produced a spectacular gold rush in Northern California, attracting hundreds of thousand of ambitious young men from around the world. Only a few struck it rich, and many returned home disappointed, most appreciated the other economic opportunities in California, especially in agriculture, and brought their families to join them. California became the 31st US state in 1850 and played a role in the American Civil War. Chinese immigrants increasingly came under attack from nativists, they were forced out of industry and agriculture, as gold petered out, California increasingly became a highly productive agricultural society. The coming of the railroads in 1869 linked its rich economy with the rest of the nation, in the late 19th century, Southern California, especially Los Angeles, started to grow rapidly. Different tribes of Native Americans lived in the area that is now California for an estimated 13,000 to 15,000 years, over 100 tribes and bands inhabited the area. Various estimates of the Native American population in California during the period range from 100,000 to 300,000. Californias population held about one-third of all Native Americans in what is now the United States and this popular Spanish fantasy was printed in several editions with the earliest surviving edition published about 1510. In exploring Baja California the earliest explorers thought the Baja California peninsula was an island, mapmakers started using the name California to label the unexplored territory on the North American west coast. European explorers flying the flags of Spain and of England explored the Pacific Coast of California beginning in the mid-16th century, the first European to explore the California coast was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, working for Spain. He died in California, and his expedition found no wealth, no advanced Indian civilization, no apparent agriculture, California was of little further interest. They depicted the Indians as living at a subsistence level. They had no apparent agriculture, no domesticated animals except dogs, no pottery, and their only tools were made out of wood, leather, woven baskets and netting, stones and horns
2.
History of California before 1900
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Human history in California begins with indigenous Americans first arriving in California some 13, 000–15,000 years ago. Exploration and settlement by Europeans along the coasts and in the valleys began in the 16th century. California was acquired by the United States under the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the defeat of Mexico in the Mexican–American War, American westward expansion intensified with the California Gold Rush, beginning in 1849. California joined the Union as a state in 1850, due to the Compromise of 1850. By the end of the 19th century, California was still rural and agricultural. The most commonly accepted model of migration to the New World is that peoples from Asia crossed the Bering land bridge to the Americas some 16,500 years ago. The remains of Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of an early habitation. In all, some 30 tribes or culture groups lived in what is now California and these groups included the early-arriving Hokan family and the recently arrived Uto-Aztecan 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. At the time of the first European contact, Native American tribes included the Chumash, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Ohlone, Pomo, Serrano, Shasta, Tataviam, Tongva, Wintu, tribes adapted to Californias many climates. Coastal tribes were a source of trading beads, produced from mussel shells using stone tools. Tribes in Californias broad Central Valley and the surrounding foothills developed an early agriculture, burning the grasslands to encourage growth of wild plants. The acorns from these trees were pounded into a powder, tribes living in the mountains of the north and east relied heavily on salmon and game hunting, and used Californias 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 harsh environment by making careful use of local plants and living in oases. The indigenous people practiced various forms of forest gardening in the forests, grasslands, mixed woodlands, by burning underbrush and grass, the Native Americans revitalized patches of land whose regrowth provided fresh shoots to attract food animals. A form of farming was used to clear areas of old growth to encourage new in a repeated cycle. The relative strength of the tribes was dynamic, as the more successful expanded their territories, slave-trading and war among tribes alternated with periods of relative peace. The total population of Native California is estimated, by the time of extensive European contact in the 18th century, before Europeans landed in North America, about one-third of all natives in what is now the United States were living in the area that is now California
3.
California Gold Rush
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The California Gold Rush began on January 24,1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutters Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States, the Gold Rush initiated the California Genocide, with 100,000 Native Californians dying between 1848 and 1868. By the time it ended, California had gone from a thinly populated ex-Mexican territory to the state of the first nominee for the Republican Party. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial, whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called forty-niners. The first to hear confirmed information of the rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Latin America. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. San Francisco grew from a settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California, in 1849 a state constitution was written. The new constitution was adopted by vote, and the future states interim first governor. In September,1850, California became a state, at the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields and a system of staking claims was developed. Prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, although the mining caused environmental harm, more sophisticated methods of gold recovery were developed and later adopted around the world. New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service, by 1869 railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, Gold worth tens of billions of todays dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few. However, many returned home with more than they had started with. The Mexican–American War ended on February 3,1848, although California was firmly in American hands before that, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided for, among other things, the formal transfer of Upper California to the United States. The California Gold Rush began at Sutters Mill, near Coloma, on January 24,1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two tested the metal. However, rumors started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher
4.
California in the American Civil War
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The State of California did not send its units east, but many citizens traveled east and joined the Union Army there, some of whom became famous. Californias Volunteers also conducted operations against the native peoples within the state and in the other Western territories of the Departments of the Pacific. Following the Gold Rush, California was settled primarily by Midwestern and Southern farmers, miners, Democrats dominated the state from its foundation. In the beginning of 1861, as the crisis began, the secessionists in San Francisco made an attempt to separate the state and Oregon from the union. Patriotic fervor swept California after the attack on Fort Sumter, providing the manpower for Volunteer Regiments recruited mainly from the counties in the north of the State. When the Democratic party split over the war, Republican supporters of Lincoln took control of the state in the September elections, Volunteer Regiments were sent to occupy pro-secessionist Southern California and Tulare County, leaving them generally powerless during the war itself. However some Southerners traveled east to join the Confederate Army, evading Union patrols, others remaining in the state attempted to outfit a privateer to prey on coastal shipping, and late in the war two groups of partisan rangers were formed but none was successful. When California was admitted as a state under the Compromise of 1850, as a result, Southerners in Congress voted against admission in 1850 while Northerners pushed it through, pointing to its population of 93,000 and its vast wealth in gold. Northern California, which was dominated by mining, shipping, and commercial elites of San Francisco, in the 1856 presidential election, California gave its electoral votes to the winner, James Buchanan. The last attempt, the Pico Act of 1859, was passed by the California State Legislature, weller, approved overwhelmingly by voters in the proposed Territory of Colorado and sent to Washington, D. C. with a strong advocate in Senator Milton Latham. However the secession crisis following the election of Lincoln in 1860 led to the proposal never coming to a vote. In 1860 California gave a plurality of 38,733 votes to Abraham Lincoln, whose 32% of the total vote was enough to win all its electoral votes. During the secession crisis following Lincolns election, Federal troops were under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, in Benicia, General Johnston strongly believed in the Southern right to secede but regretted that it was occurring. A group of Southern sympathizers in the state plans to secede with Oregon to form a Pacific Republic. The success of their plans rested on the cooperation of General Johnston and he told them to tell this to their Southern friends. Deprived of his aid the plans for California and Oregon to secede from the United States never came to fruition, meanwhile, Union men feared Johnston would aid such a plot and communicated their fears to Washington asking for his replacement. Brig. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner was soon sent west via Panama to replace Johnston in March 1861, Johnston resigned his commission on April 9, and after Sumner arrived on April 25 turned over his command and moved with his family to Los Angeles. He would soon travel with other Southerners across New Mexico Territory to Texas and he died at the Battle of Shiloh
5.
Maritime history of California
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In the northwest coast of California near the redwood forests several Indian tribes developed large dugout canoes they used for fishing, trade and warfare. These canoes were constructed by taking a tree and shaping it with hand tools. A redwood log 4 metres long and 240 centimetres diameter weighs about 2,000 kilograms and this large weight meant that the logs were selected that required a minimum of movement—usually driftwood or dead fall trees that had been blown over by the wind. Sometimes logs were cut to length and rolled into water where they could be floated to a work area. The logs were cut to length by fire and stone age hand tools. The basic procedure was to start a fire on the tree where it needed shaping. This would leave one or more centimeters of charred wood where the fire was built that would be easier to remove. By successively using small fires to char the areas that needed to be worked the logs could be shaped by the crude scrapers and rock, shellfish, a finished 4 metres long dugout canoe with a nominal 5 centimetres thickness still weighed over 100 kilograms. Most larger dugouts weighed too much to move easily and were usually just pulled up on a far enough to get them above high tide. Constructing these types of dugout canoes took considerable time and skill with stone age tools, dugout canoes typically lasted several years. Tule have a diameter, rounded green stems that grows to 1 to 3 metres tall. They grow well in marshes, wetlands or at the edges of bodies of water, the tule stem has a pithy interior filled with spongy tissue packed with air cells—this makes it float well on water as well as a good insulator. Native Americans used tule for making and thatching huts, baskets, mats, boats, decoys, hats, clothing, Tule was typically cut using deer scapula saws that had rough saw like edges cut into them. Tule has to be handled with care when green to avoid breaking the stem, to make a tule boat, green tule was cut and then spread out in the sun to dry for several days. Tule canoes were constructed of cut stalks of tule plants bundled together around a core for extra strength. The bundle of tules could be pre-bent as they were being bundled to form a raised prow, the length of each bundle depends on the size of the boat that were then typically about 10 feet to 15 feet. The bundle that formed the bottom of the canoe on which the boatman or boatmen sat, Tule canoes typically accommodated one to four people. Tule boats can be built from dried tule, by experienced canoe builders
6.
History of rail transportation in California
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In recent years, passenger rail transportation has undergone something of a renaissance, with the introduction of services such as Metrolink, Coaster, Caltrain, Amtrak California, and others. On November 4,2008, the People of California passed Proposition 1a, the early Forty-Niners of the California Gold Rush wishing to come to California were faced with limited options. From the East Coast, for example, a voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months. Eventually, most gold-seekers took the route across the continental United States. Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever to cholera or Indian attack, the very first inter-oceanic railroad which affected California was built in 1855 across the Isthmus of Panama, the Panama Railway. The Panama Railway reduced the time needed to cross the Isthmus from a week of difficult, the 1,600 mile trip from Omaha, Nebraska would now take mere days. The Wild West was quickly transformed from a lawless, agrarian frontier to what would become an urbanized, industrialized economic, of perhaps greater significance is the unbridled economic growth that was spurred on by the sheer diversity of opportunities available in the region. The four years following the Golden Spike ceremony saw the length of track in the U. S. double to over 70,000 miles, virtually the entire country was accessible by rail, making a national economy possible for the first time. As rail lines pushed further and further into the wilderness, they opened up huge areas which would have lain fallow. The railroads helped establish countless towns and settlements, paved the way to abundant mineral deposits and fertile tracts of pastures and farmland, and created new markets for eastern goods. It is estimated that by the end of World War II, rail companies nationwide remunerated to the government over $1 billion dollars, the railroads would, in time, provide equally important linkages to move the inhabitants throughout the state, interconnecting its blossoming communities. Transportation determines the flow of population, declared J. D. Spreckels, one of Californias early railroad entrepreneurs, just after the dawn of the twentieth century. Before you can hope to get people to live anywhere. you must first of all them that they can get there quickly, comfortably and, above all. Among Spreckels many accomplishments was the formation of the San Diego Electric Railway in 1892, which radiated out from downtown to north, south. Henry Huntington, the nephew of Central Pacific founder Collis P. Huntington, would develop his Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, the Southern Pacific soon followed suit and the level of real estate speculation reached a new high, with boom towns springing up literally overnight. Free, daily railroad-sponsored excursions enticed overeager potential buyers to visit the many undeveloped properties firsthand, despite all of the shortcomings, in the end the State reaped innumerable and unprecedented benefits from its associations with the railroad companies, which helped put California on the map. Even today, California is well known for the abundance and many varieties of trees that are cultivated throughout the state. The only fruits indigenous to the region, however, consisted of berries or grew on small bushes
7.
History of California's state highway system
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The state highway system in the U. S. state of California dates back to 1896, when the state took over maintenance of the Lake Tahoe Wagon Road. Construction of a connected system began in 1912, after the states voters approved an $18 million bond issue for over 3000 miles of highways. The last large addition was made by the California State Assembly in 1959, the 58 mile road had been operated as a toll road until 1886, when El Dorado County bought it, the county deeded the road to the state on February 28,1896. Funding was only enough for minimal improvements, including a bridge over the South Fork American River in 1901. Also in 1895, on March 27, the created the three-person Bureau of Highways to coordinate efforts by the counties to build good roads. The bureau traveled to every county of the state in 1895 and 1896 and prepared a map of a system of state roads. Several more state highways were legislated in the decade. This new department, in addition to duties, was to maintain all state highways. On March 22,1909 the State Highways Act was passed and this law authorized the Department of Engineering to issue $18 million in bonds for a continuous and connected state highway system that would connect all county seats. To this end, the department created the three-member California Highway Commission on August 8,1911 to take charge of the construction. As with the 1896 plan by the Bureau of Highways, the Highway Commission traveled the state to determine the best routes, construction began in mid-1912, with groundbreaking on Contract One - now part of SR82 in San Mateo County - on August 7. Noteworthy portions of the built by the commission included the Ridge Route in southern California. This gave the Department of Engineering an additional $12 million to complete the original system, at this time, each route was assigned a number from 1 to 34, this system of labeling routes, although never marked with signs, remained until the 1964 renumbering. Where not serving as extensions of existing routes, these -, the three bond issues together totaled 5560 miles, of which just over 40% was completed or under construction in mid-1920. The Department of Engineering became part of the new Department of Public Works in 1921, in order to pay for the roads, a 2-cent per gallon gasoline tax was approved in 1923. The legislature continued to add highways to the system, including the Mother Lode Highway in 1921 and the Arrowhead Trail in 1925. In January 1928, the California State Automobile Association and Automobile Club of Southern California, Highways along several of the most major state highways. The California Toll Bridge Authority was created in 1929 to acquire and operate all toll bridges on highways, including the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
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