Devil's Punchbowl

 California, a state in the western United States, borders the Pacific Ocean. The third largest state in the Union, California covers an area of great physical diversity in which uplands dominate the landscape. The mountains, hills, ridges, and peaks of California flank the coastline, rise to nearly 4600 m (15,000 ft) in the towering Sierra Nevada, encircle the great fertile basin of the Central Valley, and separate the desert into innumerable basins. However, despite the physical dominance and economic value of the uplands, California’s urban areas and economic production are concentrated in the valleys and lowlands, such as in the huge metropolitan region centered on Los Angeles, the state’s largest and the nation’s second largest city. Manufacturing, agriculture, and related activities are the principal sources of income. They are based in large part on the state’s wealth of natural resources, its productive farmlands, its large and highly skilled labor force, and its ability to market its output both at home and abroad.

Death Valley

California’s size, complexity, and economic productivity make it preeminently a state of superlatives. It has the lowest point in the country, in Death Valley, and the highest U.S. peak outside of Alaska, Mount Whitney. Among the 50 states it has the greatest number of national parks and national forests, and the only stands of redwoods and giant sequoias. Its annual farm output is greater in value than that of any other state, and it leads the rest of the nation in the production of many crops. It is the leading state in volume of annual construction and manufacturing. California has more people than any other state and more automobiles, more civil aircraft, and more students enrolled in universities and colleges.

Between the late 1940s and late 1980s the rate of growth and actual growth of California’s population and economy were phenomenal compared with other states. However, this growth also gave rise to, or aggravated, several major problems that now face Californians. Much of the growth occurred in the dry south where water shortages must be offset by vast, expensive public projects delivering water from the wetter north. Urban centers extended outward into good farmland, forever removing it from food production. In addition, as population continues to increase, California is faced with the problem of providing its inhabitants with more schools, hospitals, water, highways, recreational facilities, and other services.

The name California was first used to designate the region by the Spanish expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, as it sailed northward along the coast from Mexico in 1542. The name itself was probably derived from a popular Spanish novel published in 1510 in which a fictional island paradise named California was described. The state’s official nickname is the Golden State, referring to the gold rush, which played a central role in California’s entry into the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. The nickname also suggests the state’s golden fields and sunshine.

Mount Shasta, California

California, the third largest state in the Union, has a total area of 411,471 sq km (158,869 sq mi), including 6926 sq km (2674 sq mi) of inland water and 575 sq km (222 sq mi) of coastal waters over which it has jurisdiction. The state is roughly rectangular in shape, although the southern two-thirds bends in a dogleg toward the east. It has a maximum distance north to south of 1052 km (654 mi) and an east-to-west extent of 945 km (587 mi), although even locations along the state’s eastern border are less than about 350 km (about 220 mi) from the ocean. California’s mean elevation is about 880 m (about 2900 ft).

Much of California lies in a geologically unstable area, crisscrossed by fault, or fracture, lines in the earth’s crust. The great San Andreas Fault extends for about 1000 km (about 600 mi) northwestward from the Imperial Valley to Point Arena and out to sea. This fault line has caused several notable earthquakes in the recorded history of California. The most widely publicized was that of April 18, 1906, which resulted in the destruction of central San Francisco. Although major earthquakes are rare, landslides, mudflows, minor tremors, and cracks in the ground occur regularly.

Original Inhabitants

Prehistoric inhabitants of California practiced complex religions, hunted with arrowheads made of flint, and subsisted largely on the abundant available acorns supplemented by numerous small animals; coastal peoples ate fish and shellfish. California has many different local climates. Native houses varied accordingly. Indigenous Californians often lived in small communities of about 150 people whom the Spanish called rancherias. Within the boundaries of present-day California there were once 22 different linguistic families with 135 regional dialects. At the time of European discovery there may have been 100,000 to 150,000 native inhabitants in California, but diseases brought by the Europeans would markedly reduce the population.


European Exploration

The Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European in the area of present-day California. In 1542 Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay and then continued north along the California coast, making frequent trips ashore to claim land for Spain. In 1579 the English explorer Sir Francis Drake sailed along the coast of northern California, which he named Nova Albion and claimed for England. However, no Europeans settled in California for nearly 200 years thereafter.


Spanish Rule

In the 1740s and 1750s Russian traders in search of seal and sea otter pelts began hunting along the Pacific coastline north of California. As Spain wanted to prevent Russian claims to the area, in 1769 Governor Gaspar de Portolá of Lower California (now Baja California, Mexico) led an expedition to settle California. Accompanied by Junípero Serra, a Franciscan missionary, in July they reached the site of San Diego. There they set up a presidio, or military post, as well as a mission, where the native inhabitants were brought to be taught Christianity and to be prepared to become subjects of the Spanish king. Between 1769 and 1823 the Franciscans, a religious order of the Roman Catholic church, built 20 more missions near the coast of California. Before long the missions controlled so much land that they formed a continuous chain from San Diego to north of San Francisco Bay. Most of the native peoples in the coastal region were taken to the missions and were forced to work as farm laborers under the direction of the missionaries. The Spanish built a number of presidios in addition to their first one at San Diego and created small farming settlements, known as pueblos. The first pueblo was established as early as 1777. The pueblos were inhabited for the most part by poor settlers from Mexico whom the Spanish had induced to go to the California region.

Spain, however, could not prevent foreigners from entering California. British, French, and United States ships traded with the Spanish coastal settlements in violation of Spanish regulations prohibiting such trade. In 1812 Russian fur traders built an outpost, now known as Fort Ross, less than 160 km (100 mi) north of San Francisco. They also built several settlements in the vicinity of Bodega Bay, and refused to withdraw from California until 1824, when the region was no longer under Spanish control.

Mexican Rule

In 1821 Mexico gained its independence from Spain. In 1825, after several years of local provisional government, Alta California, as the region was then called, formally became a territory of the Republic of Mexico.

A number of influential Californians had disliked the wealth and power of the missions during Spanish rule, and after Mexican independence protested to the Mexican authorities against the missions. Eventually the new republic agreed to reduce the power of the missions, and in 1833 the Mexican congress released Native Americans from the control of the missions and opened mission lands for settlement by Californians.

Most of the former mission lands were given as grants to several hundred long-established families. Huge semifeudal estates, known as ranchos, replaced the missions as the dominant institution in California. Cattle raising, developed during the mission days, was the main economic activity on the ranchos. Ranchos traded cattle hides, tallow, horns, and pickled beef for processed food and manufactured goods from foreign ships, including some from the United States.

During the period of Mexican rule, which lasted into the 1840s, a series of largely bloodless uprisings broke out in California. Sometimes these pitted the rancheros, or ranch owners, against the Mexican authorities, but at other times they involved feuds between rancheros themselves, who fought over land or issues of pride.

United States Settlement

Most U.S. citizens who went to California before 1840 were sailors, fur trappers, and adventurers. A number of trappers, including James Ohio Pattie and Jedediah Smith, arrived by overland routes from the East, and in 1840 several hundred settlers from the United States lived in California, in addition to several thousand Hispanic, or Spanish-speaking, settlers. United States settlers sent out exaggerated reports of the easy life in California. In the 1840s emigrant parties in the Midwest began to organize for the overland trip to California and other regions along the Pacific Coast. In 1841 John Bidwell and John Bartleson led the first group of settlers overland, and in the next five years about 800 settlers traveled to California over the western portion of the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, and the California Trail. These travelers endured a long, arduous trek across plains, deserts, and mountains, and often faced hostile native peoples and bad weather. One group, the Donner party, became stranded in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846 and 1847; some ate dead members of the party to survive.

Most of the new Californians, many of them farmers, settled in the fertile Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, rather than along the coast. The Mexican government regarded the United States settlers with hostility and suspicion, fearing that they would encourage the United States to attempt to annex California, but the Mexican government was too weak and divided to expel them.


Mexican War

In 1845 Mexico ruled vast areas of what became the western and southwestern United States, including California. U.S. President James K. Polk was committed to the expansion of the United States and favored the annexation of Texas, which occurred in December 1845. The month before, Polk had sent an envoy to Mexico City in an attempt to purchase California and other parts of the Southwest. In May 1846 Mexico refused the offer. This refusal was one factor-along with the Texas annexation and lawsuits against the Mexican government by U.S. citizens-that led to the Mexican War (1846-1848) between Mexico and the United States.

United States settlers in California had become increasingly uncomfortable with Mexican rule. On June 14, 1846, they captured the presidio at Sonoma, north of San Francisco, and proclaimed the independence of the settlements. The uprising is known as the Bear Flag Revolt, because the rebels raised a homemade flag that carried the figure of a grizzly bear, as well as a star and the words California Republic. John Charles Frémont, an explorer and future Republican candidate for U.S. president, lent support to these rebels, but the republic was short-lived. On July 7, 1846, Commodore John D. Sloat, commander of U.S. naval forces along the Pacific Coast, ordered the U.S. flag raised at Monterey and formally claimed California for the United States.

In August, Sloat’s replacement, Commodore Robert F. Stockton, set up a new government in California with himself as governor. In September, however, Mexicans led by Captain José Maria Flores attacked the new republic and gained control over much of California south of San Luis Obispo. Several months later, in December 1846, a U.S. force under Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny arrived in California. They were defeated at the Battle of San Pasqual, near what is now Escondido, but Kearny’s men, in cooperation with Stockton’s troops, captured Los Angeles on January 10, 1847. At Los Angeles, the Mexicans, under the so-called Cahuenga Capitulation, agreed to accept United States rule. On February 2, 1848, California was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which formally ended the Mexican War.

Gold Rush

Scarcely more than a week before the signing of the treaty, on January 24, 1848, Pennsylvania-born carpenter James W. Marshall inspected a sawmill that he was building with his partner, John A. Sutter, on the South Fork of the American River, 56 km (35 mi) northeast of Sacramento. Marshall noticed flakes of yellow metal that later proved to be gold. By the end of that year, Marshall’s discovery had set off the greatest gold rush in United States history. In 1849 gold seekers, known as Forty-Niners, came to California from every part of the United States and from all over the world. The search for gold was concentrated on the Mother Lode country, in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. California’s population now rose to more than 90,000 by the end of 1849 and to 220,000 by 1852, the year in which gold production reached its peak. In the next two years, the gold rush ended almost as quickly as it began. Gold mining became a fairly stable and more organized enterprise. Most prospectors either became farmers, merchants, or left the state, as large mining companies took their place.

Early 20th-Century Economic Development

During the first three decades of the 20th century, California's economy and population continued to grow apace. Between 1900 and 1930 the state's population increased from 1,485,053 to 5,677,251. The rate of growth was most rapid in southern California, especially around Los Angeles. Huge irrigation projects and mechanized farming methods dramatically increased agricultural production.

Industrial production also increased in the same three decades. In 1907 oil surpassed gold as California's most economically valuable natural resource, and between 1900 and 1936, California became one of the principal oil-producing states in the nation. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 greatly shortened the sea route between California and the East Coast of the United States. At the same time, a deepwater harbor was built at Los Angeles.

In April 1906 San Francisco was seriously damaged by an earthquake, which caused a fire that burned for three days. Most of San Francisco's downtown and residential areas were destroyed. However, the city was rebuilt quickly, with many improved facilities, including a better port. Many highways were built in California in the 1920s, and a number of automobile-assembly plants were built, primarily near San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the 1920s and 1930s the Los Angeles area became an important center for the U.S. aircraft industry. Also in the 1920s, the new motion-picture industry grew at Hollywood in southern California.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed caused high unemployment, many business failures, and farm foreclosures in California throughout the 1930s. The state's social and economic problems were also aggravated by the influx of thousands of homeless farmers and farm workers from drought-ridden Oklahoma and Arkansas, called Okies and Arkies, as well as emigrants from Kansas, Texas, and other states.

The economic distress of the 1930s was partially eased by construction on a number of water projects in the state. These included Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam in 1947), Imperial Dam, and Parker Dam, on the lower Colorado River, as well as major canals and aqueducts linking the dams with the Los Angeles area and the Imperial Valley. Work was also begun during the 1930s on a vast project to bring water to the Central Valley.


World War II and After

During World War II (1939-1945) the demand for war supplies helped the recovery of California's agricultural, manufacturing, shipbuilding, and lumbering industries. The war in the Pacific also enormously increased the traffic at California's ports and naval bases and brought thousands of industrial workers to the state's new aircraft and munitions plants.


The Japanese in California

Japanese workers had begun immigrating to California in the 1890s and experienced racial discrimination, as had the Chinese before them. In 1906 the San Francisco Board of Education announced that Japanese students would have to attend a Chinese school, which was renamed the Oriental School. President Theodore Roosevelt arranged to have the policy rescinded in exchange for Japanese limits on immigration to the United States. In 1924 Asian immigration was shut off entirely.

As World War II approached, anti-Japanese feelings increased further. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, public groups in California argued that the Japanese should be removed from the state. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the removal of 112,000 Californians of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, to internment camps in the interior of the United States. After the war, although they were allowed to return, a large number settled in other areas. In 1988 the Congress of the United States passed a bill to compensate those who had been detained.


Post-war California

California's varied economy provided its new residents with a personal income substantially above the national average. The decade after the war saw especially rapid urban residential growth. In those ten years, California's population increased almost 50 percent-from almost 9 million to 13 million. By 1970 the state numbered 19.9 million residents, bypassing New York to become the most populous state.

Earl Warren, a liberal Republican, served as governor for ten years until September 1953, when he was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1959 Edmund G. Brown, Sr., became the state's second Democratic governor since 1899. But by 1966 California had become more conservative, and Brown was defeated in his bid for a third term by Republican Ronald Reagan, a former movie actor. Many California voters saw government activity related to social and economic problems as too much interference in the concerns of private individuals. Conservatism in California was especially strong in populous southern California and in rural areas. Reagan, who was reelected governor in 1970, also became a leading spokesman nationwide for conservative issues, and in 1980 was elected president of the United States, defeating Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

Violent protests by dissident groups further encouraged the conservative trend. Blacks had migrated to California in large numbers during and after World War II seeking jobs. Their growing resentment against discrimination in housing and labor unions accompanied the destructive August 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles. These outbreaks helped turn many whites against the policies of Governor Brown. Brown's administration had cracked down on racial discrimination by employers, and increased unemployment insurance and workers' compensation payments. In the 1970s a large influx of Mexican immigrants, many of them illegal, created still more racial tension.

Dissident protests also plagued California's college campuses in the late 1960s. Students demonstrated against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). One major center of public demonstrations was the University of California at Berkeley. The protests alarmed voters, who generally supported measures to suppress the disturbances and to reduce funds for higher education.

Labor issues also confronted the state in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the important fruit and vegetable industry. During World War II the United States had reached an agreement with Mexico to allow large numbers of workers, called braceros, to work in the United States. They had been joined by illegal immigrants from Mexico who were looking for work. Many of these immigrants became farm workers in California. The United Farm Workers Union, headed by Cesar Chavez, struggled to unionize agricultural laborers, largely Hispanic, despite the determined opposition of farm owners. In 1975 all farm workers were guaranteed the right to collective bargaining by the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, and in 1978 a majority of grape growers, whom the United Farm Workers had been boycotting, signed contracts with the union.

Californians also faced the problem of protecting both their physical resources and their environment. The state's extraordinary growth in the years after World War II required the development of huge projects to supply residential, agricultural, and industrial water needs, particularly in arid and heavily populated southern California. The exploding population and growing economy also contributed to pollution of the air and of the environment. In the 1950s and 1960s the smog for which Los Angeles had become notorious spread to other urban areas, even to the Central Valley, as well as to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park in the summers. California now began seriously to attack its environmental problems, and in 1976 the legislature created a commission to control development along the coastline.

Reagan was succeeded as governor in 1975 by Democrat Edmund G. Brown, Jr., the son of Reagan's predecessor. Brown, Jr., also supported government involvement in social and economic activities. His administration supported civil rights legislation, programs to protect the state's environment, and completion of his father's huge California Water Project.

But Brown, Jr., also argued that government could only do so much. In 1978 a "taxpayers' revolt" in California offered Brown, Jr., an opportunity to put his theories of smaller government into practice. The state's voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment, known as Proposition 13, that severely reduced local property tax rates by more than two-thirds. This amendment created a financial crisis for local governments, and the state legislature was forced to provide emergency aid from the treasury.


The Recent Past

In the past few decades California has experienced a frenzied building of new freeways, airports, factories, and schools. Smog and traffic congestion have enveloped urban areas and an urban landscape has replaced former vineyards and orange groves. Overcrowding, too, has diminished the allure of California and the optimism of Californians who face a future that sometimes seems almost unmanageable.

Following the Vietnam War, the federal government admitted large numbers of Asians from countries like Cambodia and Singapore. In addition, legal and illegal immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America have complicated the urban tensions that California already faced.

Pete Wilson was elected governor of California in 1990. A former U.S. senator and a Republican, Wilson faced declining state revenues and serious unemployment problems. These were partly due to the decrease of federal defense spending following the end of the Cold War, the economic and diplomatic struggle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In addition, new business growth had been affected by more stringent environmental regulations.

Many parts of California were buffeted by serious natural disasters in the late 1980s and 1990s. Earthquakes caused major damage in the San Francisco area in 1989 as well as east of Los Angeles in 1992, and again in the Los Angeles area in 1994. Brush fires destroyed more than 1000 homes in southern California in 1993. By early 1995 winter storms caused flood damage throughout the state.

Racial tensions increased in the 1990s. In 1991 white Los Angeles police officers were videotaped while beating a black motorist named Rodney King. When the officers were found not guilty during their criminal trial in 1992, news of the acquittal set off yet another riot in south-central Los Angeles. Some 58 people were killed and many homes and businesses were destroyed or looted. In April 1993 two of the police officers were convicted by a court for violating Rodney King's civil rights.

Also in the 1990s, illegal immigration from Mexico became one of the biggest political issues in California. In November 1994 California voters approved the controversial Proposition 187, which would revoke the rights of illegal immigrants to state education, welfare, and health services. In November 1995 a U.S. District judge overturned major parts of the proposition, but anti-immigration forces promised to continue to push for limitations on the rights of illegal immigrants.

Racial politics have also affected higher education in California. To reflect the state's ethnic diversity on its campuses, in the 1970s university administrators had devised a complex racial preference criteria for each of the campuses. While increasing minority representation on campuses, it also prevented some top California high school graduates from being admitted. Under the earlier (1978) U.S. Supreme Court decision, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the University of California was prohibited from creating such racial quotas, but was permitted to consider race as one factor in admissions policies.

In July 1995, however, the University of California Board of Regents turned away from previous admissions policies entirely when it passed a resolution eliminating programs that called for racial and gender preferences in admissions, hiring, and the granting of outside contracts. On January 18, 1996, the board reaffirmed its decision when it voted to postpone indefinitely discussion on a proposal to reinstate the earlier policies. The final resolution offered an exception for disadvantaged students.

In November 1996 a statewide challenge to affirmative action programs was placed on the ballot. California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209, which ended any preference based on gender, race, or ethnicity for jobs, state contracts, or admission to state schools. However, its implementation was prevented by various court challenges.

The past few decades have been California's most complicated historical period. The rapid construction of freeways, airports, new factories and schools, symbolized a continuing shift away from an agricultural society and toward and industrial one. As the state moved from a rural to an urban culture, grape vineyards and orange groves gave way to urban sprawl, and much of the quiet grace and beauty of the past seemed to vanish. Nonetheless, California's warm climate and outdoor way of life continue to attract new residents.

The history section of this article was contributed by Andrew Rolle. The remainder of the article was contributed by Crane S. Miller.