Adsactly Education: California
California
The Golden State
Capital: Sacramento
Largest City: Los Angeles
155,959 sq. mi. 403,934 sq. Km
3rd Largest State
Admitted to US: 1850 (31st)
Population: 39,000,000 (1st)
Highest Point: 14,505 ft (4421 m)
Lowest Point: -279 ft (-85 m)
State Bird: California Quail
State Flower: Golden Poppy
Motto: Eureka
Bordered By: Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Baja California Nortre (Mexico) and the Pacific Ocean.
California
California takes it’s name from a Caliphate in a fictional land from a series of books written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the 15th Century. The fictional California was said to be rich in Gold and Jewels.
California was settled by humans early, the climate and food sources were enticing to the early inhabitants. There is (disputed) evidence that possibly indicates humans there as much as 40,000 years ago. Certainly people were there 12,000 years ago and some of them are the ancestors of the current natives.
First European contact probably came from the Spanish sailor Francisco de Ulloa who explored the west coast of North America. De Ulloa thought Baja California and California were part of a huge Island and maps of the time show it that way. The idea persisted in some circles until as late as the 18th Century.
California was originally claimed by Spain as part of the ‘New Spain’ empire and was known as Alta California which included current California plus parts of Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. It became part of Mexico when they won their independence in 1821 but a revolt by American Settlers led to the area being declared an independent Republic in 1846 and led to the American invasion at the start of the Mexican War in 1846. Mexico officially ceded California to the US as a part of the settlement of the Mexican War in 1848. California was quickly organized as a territory (Gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848) and was admitted to the Union as the 31st state in 1850.
California was by it’s own constitution (in negotiation with the US Congress) a free state (no slavery) and a part of the Union war effort during the American Civil War. Due to the high numbers of Southern sympathizers in the state it sent no organized units to the War but did contribute gold to the Union Cause.
Between 1850 and 1860 California hired several militias to “protect” the settlers from the local native population. By 1860 the natives had been herded into reservations that were too small and didn’t have enough resources to support the population. Many modern day historians have labeled this enforced relocation as ‘genocide’.
In 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad was completed which reduced the time needed to travel from St. Louis to Sacramento from 6 months to 6 days. The state was set for explosive population growth.
20th Century California
Early in the 20th Century roads were completed that connected California to the newly popular automobile and the industry around it. The Lincoln Highway and Route 66 made travel from the rest of the country relatively easy and the population simply exploded. From fewer than one million residents in 1900 to the most populous state in the Union by 1940 sort of explosion.
The population explosion drove a massive amount of infrastructure projects in the state such as dams and canals and water diversion projects and agriculture and highways and bridges. Private industry exploded during the same time frame.
The motion picture industry had established Los Angeles as it’s global headquarters as early as the 1920s. It would continue to grow and prosper there and would become California’s first billion dollar industry after gold extraction.
WWII saw the huge rise of manufacturing in the state. California produced the third largest amount of military equipment used in the war. Shipbuilding and cargo handling became major components of the state’s economy and identity. Hundreds of thousands of workers were needed there and in the newly formed aerospace industry. The state’s lush valleys and climate saw California advance to feed a significant portion of the American public. Most anything will grow in California given the proper amount of water.
Suburbs were formed and grew into cities in their own rights. Mammoth highway projects were built and added to and rebuilt and tweaked just to get workers to and from their place of employment. It was all driven by the engine that is the California economy.
California in the mid to late 20th Century brought innovation after innovation to the American public. Some good, some not so much. Disneyland was opened in 1955. The happiest place on earth was in California. The movie studios kept generating money at a rate that almost defies description. A new concept, the fad, had it’s genesis in post war California. If it became ‘had to have’ in California it was immediately ‘had to have’ all over the US.
People young and old dreamed of being a part of the revolution that became California and a stunning number moved there. The population and economy grew at simply unprecedented rates. Not just in the US but in the history of the world.
Which brought about the first signs of a civilization out of control. Pollution of the land, sea and air became a huge problem. Not everybody that moved to California hit it big, a significant fraction didn’t hit at all which led to problems with crime and gangs. The inner cities became a breeding ground for all sorts of ‘antisocial behavior’.
The thing that nobody seemed to realize was that California was not it’s own island in these areas, it was just the first of the states to realize that there were/are problems with explosive growth and rampant business expansion. Per the norm for the last 100 years California is also at the leading edge of solving or remediating them.
We are going to break this post on California here, and proceed with actual causes and conditions in the next installment. There is no possible way to understate the importance of California in today’s US. It is simply the leader of the pack.
Special Laws
California prison workers will no longer be allowed to have sex with inmates
I hope you enjoyed this opening synopsis of California. The words and ideas are mine but I used Wikipedia California as the source for the information.
All images in this post are properly licensed and used.
This is part of a series on the various states. California will continue in the next installment, I hope you will return.
Authored by: @bigtom13
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