Looking for:
California rules of professional conduct- California rules of professional conduct
California is the US state with the largest economy. California's Silicon Valley is home to some of the world's most valuable technology companies , including Apple , Alphabet Inc. What is now California was first settled by Native Californian tribes. It was explored by Europeans in the 16th and 17th century. It became the 31st state of the United States in California hosts a large Mexican American population. Hispanics are expected to number Asians are the fastest growing ethnic group in California.
Many celebrities and rich people live in California. Los Angeles attracts tourists from all over the world due to its celebrity culture. Many movies and television shows are filmed in Los Angeles. California is home to many immigrants. Recent immigrants in California are from Asia.
Most immigrants in California come from Mexico 3. In , the number of Hispanic and Latino residents in California had surpassed the number of white residents, with about The geography of California varies depending on region. The eastern part of the state has the highest point in the United States outside of Alaska: Mount Whitney , in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
It is California's single most productive agricultural region and one of the most productive in the world. It produces more than half the fruit, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States.
The west-central part of the state has some small mountains and the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. California is home to many animals such as racoons , the California condor, and the mountain lion. California was once home to the Grizzly bear and the jaguar. California poppy is the official flower of California. The state is a leader in three businesses: farming , movie -making, and high technology , mostly software and websites.
Aerospace used to be a large industry there, but it has been downsized in the last 20 years. California is very diverse. There are many earthquakes in California. They happen when two tectonic plates parts of the Earth's crust shift underground. Californians need to be prepared for earthquakes and often store extra food, water, flashlights, and first aid supplies in case of such an emergency.
California has more people than any other state in the United States. If California was a separate country, it would have the sixth largest economy in the world. California is probably the state with the most ethnic groups.
It also has many different geographic features — mountains, deserts, and coasts. It is often called The Golden State. The state flower is the golden poppy.
California has a large population of Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans have influenced Californian cuisine and Californian culture. California is popular among celebrities. California English is a dialect of the English language spoken within California. California is the home to a highly diverse populace, and this is reflected in many other languages, especially Spanish.
As is the case of English is spoken in any state, not all features of California English is used by all speakers in the state, and not all features are restricted in use only to the state. However, there are some linguistic features which can be identified as either originally or predominantly Californian. California is famous for In-N-Out Burger , which is the regional chain of fast food restaurants and founded in by Harry and Esther Snyder.
Protestantism and Catholicism are the most practiced religions in California. A smaller population are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.
Marijuana became legal in Californian cuisine is influenced by Spanish cuisine, Mexican cuisine, and Asian cuisine. Mexican food is very popular in California. California is popular for its tourism. Hollywood and Disneyland are popular tourist destinations in California. In , Gavin Newsom became the governor of California.
Before him, the governor was Jerry Brown. On January 3, , Kamala Harris became the other one. In the presidential election , Kamala Harris was elected as the first woman and person of color to be Vice President of the United States. In January , Alex Padilla became the next U. Senator, replacing Harris, and became the first Hispanic U. Senator from the state.
California was more conservative during the s and s when its former governor, Ronald Reagan , ran for president as a Republican. Today, California is more liberal and less conservative.
The people in Coastal California were Native Americans. The original Californians were a diverse population, separated by language into as many as distinct dialects.
In the past, the area that was called "California" was not just today's California. This area covered the Mexican lands south of it, as well as Nevada , Utah , and parts of Arizona and Wyoming. In these early times, the borders of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific coast were not well known, so the old maps wrongly showed California to be an island. The first European who visited parts of the coast, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, came from Portugal in The first European who saw the entire coast was Sir Francis Drake, in , and he decided that the British owned it.
But starting in the late s, Spanish religious leaders of the Roman Catholic Church "missionaries" got large gifts of land in the area north of Baja California, from the Spanish king and queen.
These religious people set up small towns and villages, the famous California Missions. When Mexico was no longer controlled by Spain, the Mexican government took over the villages, and they soon became empty. These men flew a "Bear flag" that had a golden bear with a star on it. This Republic ended suddenly, however, when Commodore John D.
He said that California was now part of the United States. After the war with Mexico ended, California was split between the two countries. The western part of the part given to the United States became today's state of California. In , there were about 4, Spanish-speaking people in today's California on the American side. Today the state has a total of nearly 40,, people.
In , gold was suddenly found and the number of people went up very fast as the Gold Rush took hold. Slavery also spread there as people hoping to find gold brought African slaves and either forced them to work in gold mines or hired them out for other work.
During the American Civil War , many people in California, especially in the southern part of California, thought the South was right and slavery should be protected. Some people in Southern California even wanted Southern California to leave the rest of the state and join the Confederate States of America.
However, this did not happen. California joined the war to and helped the North the Union and sent many troops east to fight the Confederacy. At first, travel between the far west and the east coast of the United States was dangerous and took a lot of time.
Going by land was very difficult, because there were no roads and no trains, and many Native Americans were attacking American people heading West in wagons. The only other way was to travel by boat around the Cape Horn , at the southern end of South America. This took months, since the trip was thousands of miles long and the Panama Canal had not yet been built either.
But in , the connection got better quickly, because the first railroad across the continent was finished. Meanwhile, more people in California were learning that the land there was very good to grow fruit and other crops.
Oranges were grown in many parts of California. This was the beginning of the huge farming business that California has today. The economy of the State of California is the largest in the United States. The most dominant are finance , business services , government and manufacturing. If California were a sovereign nation, according to statistics, it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy, lying between Germany and India.
In , there were only a million people in California and , in Los Angeles. Today, California has more people than any other U.
Starting in , the variety of people became much greater as many different people from around the world came to the United States and often decided to live in California. California is thought to be a very liberal state, but there are still a lot of people who are Republicans and view Ronald Reagan as a hero.
Technology is very advanced and many new cultural trends begin there. Engineering and computers play a big part in the state's life. For over a hundred years, film has been one of the most important businesses in California.
They took horses and mules and Texas Longhorn cattle with them. The approximately surviving cattle and an unknown number of horses many of each were lost or eaten along the way started the cattle and horse raising industry in California.
In California the cattle and horses had few predators and plentiful grass in all but drought years. They essentially grew and multiplied as feral animals, doubling roughly every two years.
However, after reaching as west as modern-day Arizona by , the missionaries could no longer continue and decided to return back to Santa Fe. Both these pueblos and missions were on the California side of the Colorado River but were administered by the Arizona authorities. On July 17—18, , the Yuma Quechan Indians, in a dispute with the Spanish, destroyed both missions and pueblos—killing soldiers, colonists, and Friars and capturing about 80 prisoners, mostly women and children.
In four well-supported punitive expeditions in and against the Quechans, the Spanish managed to gather their dead and ransom nearly all the prisoners, but failed to re-open the Anza Trail. The Yuma Crossing was closed for Spanish traffic and it would stay closed until about California was nearly isolated again from land based travel.
About the only way into California from Mexico would now be a 40 to day voyage by sea. The average of 2. Eventually, 21 California Missions were established along the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco—about miles km up the coast.
The missions were nearly all located within 30 miles 48 km of the coast and almost no exploration or settlements were made in the Central Valley or the Sierra Nevada. The only expeditions anywhere close to the Central Valley and Sierras were the rare forays by soldiers undertaken to recover runaway Indians who had escaped from the Missions.
Traders, whalers, and scientific missions followed in the next decades. The California Missions , after they were all established, were located about one day's horseback ride apart for easier communication and linked by the El Camino Real trail. These Missions were typically manned by two to three friars and three to ten soldiers. Virtually all the physical work was done by indigenous people convinced to or coerced into joining the missions.
The padres provided instructions for making adobe bricks, building mission buildings, planting fields, digging irrigation ditches, growing new grains and vegetables, herding cattle and horses, singing, speaking Spanish, and understanding the Catholic faith—all that was thought to be necessary to bring the Indians to be able to support themselves and their new church.
Nearly all of the Indians adjoining the missions were induced to join the various missions built in California. Once the Indians had joined the mission, if they tried to leave, soldiers were sent out to retrieve them. In the s, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. The rest of the land was considered the property of the Spanish monarchy. To encourage settlement of the territory, large land grants were given to retired soldiers and colonists. Most grants were virtually free and typically went to friends and relatives in the California government.
A few foreign colonists were accepted if they accepted Spanish citizenship and joined the Catholic Faith. The Mexican Inquisition was still in nearly full force and forbade Protestants living in Mexican controlled territory. In the Spanish colonial period many of these grants were later turned into Ranchos. The total land granted to settlers in the Spanish colonial era was about , acres 3, km 2 or about 35, acres km 2 each.
The few owners of these large ranchos patterned themselves after the landed gentry in Spain and were devoted to keeping themselves living in a grand style. The rest of the population they expected to support them. Their mostly unpaid workers were nearly all Spanish trained Indians or peons that had learned how to ride horses and raise some crops. The majority of the ranch hands were paid with room and board, rough clothing, rough housing, and no salary.
The main products of these ranchos were cattle, horses and sheep, most of which lived virtually wild. The cattle were mostly killed for fresh meat, as well as hides and tallow fat which could be traded or sold for money or goods. As the cattle herds increased there came a time when nearly everything that could be made of leather was—doors, window coverings, stools, chaps , leggings, vests lariats riatas , saddles , boots, etc.
Since there was no refrigeration then, often a cow was killed for the day's fresh meat and the hide and tallow salvaged for sale later. After taking the cattle's hide and tallow their carcasses were left to rot or feed the California grizzly bears which roamed wild in California at that time, or to feed the packs of dogs that typically lived at each rancho. A series of four presidios , or Royal Forts, each manned by 10 to men, were built in Alta California by the Spanish crown through New Spain.
To support the presidios and the missions, half a dozen towns called pueblos were established in California. These were the only towns pueblos in California. Alta California became a territory rather than a full state. The territorial capital remained in Monterey, California , with a governor as executive official.
Mexico, after independence, was unstable with about 40 changes of government , in the 27 years prior to —an average government duration was 7. In Alta California, Mexico inherited a large, sparsely settled, poor, backwater province paying little or no net tax revenue to the Mexican state. In addition, Alta California had a declining Mission system as the Mission Indian population in Alta California continued to rapidly decrease. The number of Alta California settlers, always a minority of total population, slowly increased mostly by more births than deaths in the Californio population in California.
After the closure of the de Anza Trail across the Colorado River in immigration from Mexico was nearly all by ship. California continued to be a sparsely populated and isolated territory. Even before Mexico gained control of Alta California the onerous Spanish rules against trading with foreigners began to break down as the declining Spanish fleet could not enforce their no-trading policies.
The settlers, and their descendants who became known as Californios , were eager to trade for new commodities, finished goods, luxury goods, and other merchandise. The Mexican government abolished the no trade with foreign ships policy and soon regular trading trips were being made. In addition, a number of Europeans and Americans became naturalized Mexican citizens and settled in early California. Some of those became rancheros and traders during the Mexican period, such as Abel Stearns.
Cattle hides and tallow , along with marine mammal fur and other goods, provided the necessary trade articles for mutually beneficial trade. The first American, English, and Russian trading ships first appeared in California a few years before From to the average number of ships traveling to California increased to about 25 ships per year—a large increase from the average of 2. These high duties gave rise to much bribery and smuggling, as avoiding the tariffs made more money for the ship owners and made the goods less costly to the customers.
Essentially all the cost of the California government what little there was was paid for by these tariffs. So many mission Indians died from exposure to harsh conditions and diseases like measles, diphtheria, smallpox, syphilis, etc.
This increase in deaths was accompanied by a very low live birth rate among the surviving Indian population. As reported by Krell, as of December 31, , the mission Franciscan chaplains had performed a combined total of 87, baptisms and 24, marriages, and recorded 63, deaths. If Krell's numbers are to be believed others have very different numbers the Mission Indian population had declined from a peak of about 87, in about to about 14, in and continued to decline.
The Missions were becoming ever more strained as the number of Indian converts drastically declined and the deaths greatly exceeded the births.
The ratio of Indian births to deaths is believed to have been less than 0. The missions, as originally envisioned, were to last only about ten years before being converted to regular parishes. When the California missions were abolished in , some missions had existed over 66 years, but the Mission Indians were still not self-sufficient, proficient in Spanish, or wholly Catholic. Indigenous resistance and uprisings against violent settler colonialism was widespread across the missions despite severe and continuing decline in the native Californian population.
Mission San Juan Capistrano was the very first to feel the effects of this legislation the following year when, on August 9, Governor Figueroa issued his "Decree of Confiscation". Before Alta California became a part of the Mexican state, about 30 Spanish land grants had already been deeded in all of Alta California to Presidio soldiers and government officials and a few friends and family of the Alta California Governors, some of whom were grandchildren of the original Anza expedition settlers.
The Mexican Colony Law established rules for petitioning for land grants in California; and by , the rules for establishing land grants were codified in the Mexican Reglamento Regulation. The Acts sought to break the monopoly of the Franciscan missions, while paving the way for additional settlers to California by making land grants easier to obtain. When the missions were secularized, the mission property and cattle were supposed to be mostly allocated to the Mission Indians.
In practice, nearly all mission property and livestock were taken over by the about large ranchos granted by the governors—mostly to friends and family at low or no cost. The rancho owners claimed about 8,, acres 35, km 2 averaging about 18, acres 76 km 2 each.
This land was nearly all distributed on former mission land within about 30 miles 48 km of the coast. The Mexican land grants were provisional until settled and worked on for five years, and often had very indefinite boundaries and sometimes conflicting ownership claims. The boundaries of each rancho were almost never surveyed, and marked, and often depended on local landmarks that often changed over time.
Since the government depended on import tariffs for its income, there was virtually no property tax—the property tax when introduced with U.
The grantee could not subdivide, or rent out, the land without approval. The rancho owners tried to live in a grand manner, and the result was similar to a barony. Much of the agriculture, vineyards, and orchards established by the Missions were allowed to deteriorate as the rapidly declining Mission Indian population required less food, and the Missionaries and soldiers supporting the Missions disappeared.
The new Ranchos and slowly increasing Pueblos mostly only grew enough food to eat and to trade with the occasional trading ship or whaler that put into a California port to trade, get fresh water, replenish their firewood and obtain fresh vegetables. The main products of these ranchos were cattle hides called California greenbacks and tallow rendered fat for making candles and soap that were traded for other finished goods and merchandise.
This hide-and-tallow trade was mainly carried on by Boston-based ships that traveled 14, miles 23, km to 18, miles 29, km around Cape Horn to bring finished goods and merchandise to trade with the Californio Ranchos for their hides and tallow. The cattle and horses that provided the hides and tallow essentially grew wild.
By , the province of Alta California had a non-native population of about 1, Spanish and Latin American-born adult men along with about 6, women and their California-born children who became the Californios. These Spanish-speakers lived mostly in the southern half of the state from San Diego north to Santa Barbara.
Nearly all of these were adult males and a majority lived in central and northern California, from Monterey north to Sonoma and east to the Sierra Nevada foothills. A large non-coastal land grant was given to John Sutter who, in , settled a large land grant close to the future city of Sacramento, California , which he called " New Helvetia " "New Switzerland". There, he built an extensive fort equipped with much of the armament from Fort Ross —bought from the Russians on credit when they abandoned that fort.
Sutter's Fort, from to about , was a major agricultural and trade colony in California, often welcoming and assisting California Trail travelers to California. Most of the settlers at, or near, Sutter's Fort were new immigrants from the United States.
Hostilities between the U. Several battles between U. Word of the conflict reached Alta California about a month later. The main forces available to the United States in California were the bluejacket sailors and U.
Marines on board the ships of the Pacific Squadron. Speculating that war with Mexico over Texas and other land was very possible, the U.
Navy had sent several additional naval vessels to the Pacific in to protect U. It took about days, on average, for ships to travel the greater than 17,mile 27, km trip from the East coast around Cape Horn of South America to California. Initially as the war with Mexico started there were five vessels in the U. Navy's Pacific Squadron near California.
In and this was increased to 13 Navy vessels—over half the U. Navy's available ships. The only other U. They were exiting California on their way to what is now Oregon when they got word in early June that war was imminent and a revolt had already started in Sonoma, California. Hearing rumors of possible Californio military action against the newly arrived settlers in California this had already happened in , [44] some settlers decided to neutralize the small Californio garrison at Sonoma, California.
On June 15, , some thirty settlers, mostly American citizens, staged a revolt and seized the small Californio garrison, in Sonoma, without firing a shot and declared the new California Republic government. On hearing of this revolt, Fremont and his exploratory force returned to California. The "republic" never exercised any real authority and only lasted 26 days before accepting U.
The former fleet surgeon William M. There they heard word of the ongoing hostilities between the U. On May 17, , this courier's messages informed Commodore Sloat that hostilities between the U. Commodore Rear Admiral John D. They joined the sloop Cyane which was already there.
Ultimately, the British watched from the coast as the United States annexed the region. Initially there was little resistance from anyone in California as they replaced the dysfunctional and ineffective Mexican government which had already been replaced by the Californios.
The Mexican government by had already had 40 presidents in the first 24 years of its existence. Most new settlers and Californios were neutral or actively supported the revolt. Ide the leader of the Bear Flag Revolt. The California state flag of today is based on this original Bear Flag and still contains the words "California Republic".
John A. Sutter and his men and supplies at Sutter's Fort joined the revolt. In , the U. Navy was under orders to take over all California ports in the event of war. There were about to U. Marines and U. Navy bluejacket sailors available for possible land action on the Pacific Squadron's ships. Seymour, outside Monterey Harbor, Commodore Sloat was finally stirred to action. Fifty American marines and about bluejacket sailors landed and captured the city without incident—the few Californio troops formerly there having already evacuated the city.
They raised the flag of the United States without firing a shot. The only shots fired were a gun salute to the new U.
Navy ships in the harbor. Navy sailors from the sloop USS Portsmouth. Fallon received an American flag from Commodore John D. Sloat and raised it over the pueblo on July Stockton, a much more aggressive leader, asked Fremont to form a joint force of Fremont's soldiers, scouts, guides, and others, and a volunteer militia—many who were former Bear Flag Revolters.
This unit, called the California Battalion , was mustered into U. These troops included Fremont's 30 topographical men and their 30 scouts and hunters, U. Marine Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie , a U. Navy officer to handle their two cannons , a company of Indians trained by Sutter and many other permanent California settlers from several different countries as well as American settlers. The California Battalion members were used mainly to garrison and keep order in the rapidly surrendering California towns.
The Navy went down the coast from San Francisco, occupying ports without resistance as they went. The small pueblo town of San Diego surrendered 29 July without a shot being fired.
The small pueblo town of Santa Barbara surrendered without a shot being fired in August On August 13, , a joint force of U. The Californio government officials had already fled Alta California. As a result, the outnumbered United States troops evacuated the city for the following few months. Over the following four months, U.
After the Los Angeles resistance started, the American California Battalion was expanded to a force of about troops. In early January , a man joint force of U. Marine, U. Navy bluejacket sailors, General Stephen W. Kearny 's 80 U. Army dragoons cavalrymen , who had arrived over the Gila river trail in December , and about two companies of Fremont's California Battalion re-occupied Los Angeles after some very minor skirmishes mostly posturing —four months after the initial American retreat, the same U.
The minor armed resistance in California ceased when the Californios signed the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, About Californios who were worried about possible punishment from the Americans for not keeping their non-aggression promises rounded up about horses and retreated into Sonora, Mexico over the Yuma Crossing Gila River trail.
The Californios, who had wrested control of California from Mexico in , now had a new and much more stable government. After the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed in early , the Pacific Squadron then went on to capture all Baja California cities and harbors and sink or capture all the Mexican Pacific Navy they could find.
California was under U. Shubrick, showed up in Monterey in the razee USS Independence with 54 guns and about crew members. Army artillery company of soldiers under Captain Christopher Tompkins. More reinforcements of about soldiers and a few women of the Mormon Battalion arrived at San Diego on January 28, , after hostilities had ceased.
They had been recruited from the Mormon camps on the Missouri River about 2, miles 3, km away. These troops were recruited with the understanding they would be discharged in California with their weapons. Most were discharged before July More reinforcements in the form of Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson 's 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers of about soldiers showed up in March—April —again after hostilities had ceased. After desertions and deaths in transit, four ships brought Stevenson's soldiers to California.
Initially they took over all of the Pacific Squadron's on-shore military and garrison duties and the Mormon Battalion and California Battalion's garrison duties. The ship Isabella sailed from Philadelphia on 16 August , with a detachment of one hundred soldiers, and arrived in California on 18 February , the following year, at about the same time that the ship Sweden arrived with another detachment of soldiers. These soldiers were added to the existing companies of Stevenson's 1st Regiment of New York Volunteers.
Stevenson's troops were recruited with the understanding that they would be discharged in California. When gold was discovered in late January , many of Stevenson's troops deserted. The U. Adding the approximate Hispanics in San Francisco directory and an unknown but small as shown in CA Census recount number of Hispanics in Contra Costa and Santa Clara county in gives less than 8, Hispanics statewide in before hostilities commenced.
The number of California Indians is unknown since they were not included in the census but has been roughly estimated to be between 50, and , After , California was controlled with much difficulty due to desertions by a U.
Army-appointed military governor and an inadequate force of a little over troops. By , California had grown to have a non-Indian and non-Californio population of over , due to the California Gold Rush.
Congress on the number of slave versus non-slave states, the large, rapid and continuing California population gains and the large amount of gold being exported east gave California enough clout to choose its own boundaries, select its representatives, write its Constitution, and be admitted to the Union as a free state in without going through territorial status as required for most other states.
From to , California had military governors appointed by the senior military commander in California. This arrangement was distinctly unsettling to the military, as they had no inclination, precedent, or training for setting up and running a government.
President James K. Polk in office from March 4, — March 4, , tried to get the Congress to make California a territory with a territorial government and again in but was unsuccessful in getting Congress to agree on the specifics of how this was to be done—the issue was the number of free states vs.
General Bennett C. Riley who had fought in the Siege of Veracruz and Chapultepec during the Mexican—American War and considered an able military commander, was the last military governor of California in — In response to popular demand for a better more representative government, General Riley issued an official proclamation dated June 3, , calling for a constitutional convention and an election of representatives on August 1, Convention delegates were chosen by secret ballot but lacking any census data as to California's population and where they lived its representatives only roughly approximated the rapidly changing state population as later shown in the U.
California Census taken a year later. The new miners in El Dorado County were grossly under-represented as they had no representatives at the convention despite then being the most populated county in California. After the election the California Constitution Convention met in the small town and former Californio capital of Monterey, California , in September to write a state constitution.
Like all U. Constitution —differing mainly in details. The Constitutional Convention met for 43 days debating and writing the first California Constitution. The Constitution [58] copied with revisions a lot out of the Ohio and New York Constitutions but had parts that were originally several different state constitutions as well as original material. Constitution's article Bill of Rights. There were four other significant differences from the U. The convention chose the boundaries for the state—unlike most other territories, whose boundaries were set by Congress Article XII.
Article IX encouraged statewide education and provided for a system of common schools partially funded by the state and provided for the establishment of a University University of California. The California version outlawed slavery, except as punishment Article I Sec.
Like all other states they guaranteed the rights of citizens to sue in Civil court to uphold the rights of contracts and property Article I Sec. They created a court system with a supreme court with judges who had to be confirmed every 12 years.
The Constitution guaranteed the right to vote to "Every citizen of California, declared a legal voter by this Constitution, and every citizen of the United States, a resident of this State on the day of election, The constitution of was only judged a partial success as a founding document and was superseded by the current constitution, which was first ratified on May 7, Soon after the election they set up a provisional state government that set up the counties, elected a governor, senators, and representatives, and operated for ten months prior to statehood.
There was a celebration that lasted for weeks. The state capital was variously at San Jose — , Vallejo — , and Benicia — until Sacramento was finally selected in They were the first to start flocking to the state in late By the end of , some 6, Argonauts had come to California. Almost all c. Women in the California Gold Rush were few and had many opportunities to do new things and take on new tasks. Argonauts , as they were often called, walked over the California Trail or came by sea.
About 80, Argonauts arrived in alone—about 40, over the California trail and 40, by sea. San Francisco was designated the official port of entry for all California ports where U. The first Collector of Customs was Edward H. Harrison, appointed by General Kearny.
Shipping boomed from the average of about 25 vessels from to [32] to about ships in and ships in Passengers disembarking in San Francisco had one of the easier accesses to the gold country since they could take another ship from there to get to Sacramento and several other towns. San Francisco shipping boomed, and wharves and piers had to be developed to handle the onslaught of cargo — Long Wharf was probably the most prominent.
To meet the demands of the Gold Rush, ships bearing food, liquors of many types, tools, hardware, clothing, complete houses, lumber, building materials, etc. These imports included large numbers of Galapagos tortoise and sea turtle imported into Alta California to feed the Gold miners.
The Californios initially prospered, as there was a sudden increase in the demand for livestock. These food shipments changed mainly to shipments from Oregon and internal shipments in California as agriculture was developed in both states. Starting in , many of the ship crews jumped ship and headed for the gold fields when they reached port.
Soon San Francisco Bay had many hundreds of abandoned ships anchored offshore. The better ships were recrewed and put back in the shipping and passenger business. Others were bought cheap and hauled up on the mud flats and used as store ships , saloons, temporary stores, floating warehouses, homes, and a number of other uses. Many of these repurposed ships were partially destroyed in one of San Francisco's many fires and ended up as landfill to expand the available land.
The population of San Francisco exploded from about in to 36, in the California Census. In San Francisco, many people were initially housed in wooden houses, ships hauled up on the mud flats to serve as homes or businesses, wood-framed canvas tents used for saloons, hotels and boarding houses as well as other flammable structures.
All these canvas and wood structures, combined with a lot of drunken gamblers and miners, led almost inevitably to many fires. Most of San Francisco burned down six times in six Great Fires between and Californios who lived in California had finally had enough of the Mexican government and seized control of the territory of Alta California in The state was formerly under the military governor Colonel Richard Barnes Mason who only had about troops to govern California—many of these troops deserted to go to the gold fields.
Before the Gold Rush, almost no infrastructure existed in California except a few small Pueblos towns , secularized and abandoned Missions and about large averaging over 18, acres 73 km 2 ranchos owned by the Californios who had mostly taken over the Missions land and livestock. The sudden massive influx into a remote area overwhelmed the state infrastructure, which in most places didn't even exist. Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, wagons, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.
With names like Rough and Ready and Hangtown Placerville, California , each camp often had its own saloon , dance hall, and gambling house. Miners often paid for food, liquor and other goods in "dust".
Some of the first Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by the all sea route around Cape Horn. Ships could take this route year round and the first ships started leaving East Coast ports as early as November From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the southern tip of South America would typically take five to eight months—averaging about days by standard sailing ship.
When the much faster clipper ships began to be used starting in early , they could complete this journey in an average of only days; but they typically carried few passengers. They specialized in high value freight. Nearly all freight to California was carried by regular sailing vessels—they were slow but the cheapest way to ship cargo. Starting about many travelers to California took steamboats to Panama or Nicaragua, crossed the Isthmus of Panama or Nicaragua and caught another steamboat to California.
Marysville, California etc. This trip could be done in 40—60 days—depending on connections. Those who took the California Trail usually left Missouri River towns in early April and arrived in California — days later—late August or early September.
Mostly, farmers etc. About half the Argonauts to California came by wagon on one of these routes. Starting in before gold in California was even confirmed, Congress had contracted with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to set up regular paddle steamer packet ship , mail, passenger and cargo routes in the Pacific Ocean. Once the California Gold Rush was confirmed, other paddle steamers soon followed on both the Pacific and Atlantic routes.
By late paddle steamers like the SS McKim [73] were carrying miners and businessmen over the miles km trip from San Francisco up the Sacramento River to Sacramento and Marysville, California.
Steam powered tugboats started working in the San Francisco Bay soon after this. Agriculture expanded throughout the state to meet the food needs of the new settlers. Agriculture was soon found to be limited by the difficulty of finding enough water in the right places to grow irrigated crops. Winter wheat planted in the fall and harvested in the spring was one early crop that grew well without irrigation. At the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no written law regarding property rights in the goldfields, and a system of "staking claims" was developed by the miners.
The Gold Rush also had negative effects: Native Americans were pushed off of traditional lands and massacred [74] and gold mining caused environmental harm. In the early years of the California Gold Rush, placer mining methods were used, from panning to "cradles" and "rockers" or "long-toms", to diverting the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river, and then digging for gold in the gravel down to the rocky river bottom.
This placer gold had been freed by the slow disintegration, over geological time, that freed the gold from its ore. This free gold was typically found in the cracks in the rocks found at the bottom of the gravel found in rivers or creeks, as the gold typically worked down through the gravel or collected in stream bends or bottom cracks.
Some 12 million troy ounces t [75] of gold were removed in the first five years of the Gold Rush. This gold greatly increased the available money in the United States, which was on the gold standard at that time—the more gold you had, the more you could buy.
As the easier gold was recovered, the mining became much more capital and labor-intensive as the hard rock quartz mining, hydraulic mining, and dredging mining evolved. Both during the Gold Rush and in the decades that followed, hard-rock mining wound up being the single-largest source of gold produced in the Gold Country.
By , the U. Navy started making plans for a west coast navy base at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The greatly increased population, along with the new wealth of gold, caused: roads, bridges, farms, mines, steamship lines, businesses, saloons , gambling houses, boarding houses, churches, schools, towns, mercury mines, and other components of a rich modern U.
The sudden growth in population caused many more towns to be built throughout Northern, and later Southern, California and the few existing towns to be greatly expanded. The first cities started showing up as San Francisco and Sacramento exploded in population. Since the Spanish Missions were established along the coast, these areas were affected by colonization first. California Indians had no agriculture before it was introduced by the Franciscan padres, they were strictly hunter-gatherer societies.
During the Spanish and Mexican California occupation period nearly all coastal tribes south of San Francisco were induced to join a mission. So many Mission Indians died from exposure to harsh conditions at the missions and diseases like measles, diphtheria, smallpox, syphilis, etc. As reported by Krell, as of December 31, , the mission Franciscan chaplains from to had performed a combined total of 87, baptisms and 24, marriages, and recorded 63, deaths.
The Indians typically worked at one of the four Spanish pueblos as servants or at the newly established ranchos for room and board or attempted to join other tribes in the interior.
The new ranchos occupied nearly all their original tribal territories. The new wave of immigration that was sparked by the gold rush would continue to have a disastrous impact on California's native population, which continued to precipitously decline mainly due to Eurasian diseases to which they had no natural immunity. There were a number of massacres, including the Yontoket massacre , the Bloody Island massacre at Clear Lake, and the Old Shasta Massacre, in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.
Thousands more are thought to have died due to disease. Combined with a low birth rate for Indian women, the Indian population precipitously declined. Several scholars, including David Stannard , Benjamin Madley, and Ed Castillo , have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
These private military forays were involved in several of the above-mentioned massacres, and sometimes participated in the "wanton killing" of Native peoples. The first governor of California, Peter Burnett , openly called for the extermination of the Indian tribes, and in reference to the violence against California's Native population, he said, "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected.
While we cannot anticipate the result with but painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power and wisdom of man to avert. In subsequent decades after , some of the remaining native populations were gradually placed in a series of reservations and rancherias, which were often very small and isolated and lacked adequate natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them in the hunter-gathering style they were used to living.
Many other California native populations were never settled in formal reservations or rancherias and their descendants remain federally unrecognized. Tribes in northwest California practiced slavery long before the arrival of Europeans. Some returned east with enough gold to purchase their relatives. Nevertheless, as per the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians , a number of Native Americans were formally enslaved in the state, a practice that continued until the mids, when California changed its laws to conform to the 14th Amendment.
The Maritime history of California includes Native American dugouts, tule canoes, and sewn canoes tomols ; early European explorers; Colonial Spanish and Mexican California maritime history; Russians and Aleut kayaks in the maritime fur trade. Also included are sections on California naval installations, California shipbuilding, California shipwrecks, and California lighthouses. The possibility of splitting off Southern California as a territory or a state was rejected by the national government, and the idea was dead by when patriotic fervor swept California after the attack on Fort Sumter.
California's involvement in the American Civil War included sending gold east, recruiting or funding a limited number of combat units, maintaining numerous fortifications and sending troops east, some of whom became famous. Following the split in the Democratic Party in , Republican supporters of Lincoln took control of the state in , minimizing the influence of the large southern population.
Their great success was in obtaining a Pacific railroad land grant and authorization to build the Central Pacific as the western half of the transcontinental railroad. California was settled primarily by Midwestern and Southern farmers, miners, and businessmen. Though the southerners and some Californios tended to favor the Confederacy, the state did not have slavery, and they were generally powerless during the war itself.
They were prevented from organizing and their newspapers were closed down by denying them the use of the mail. Former Sen. William M. Gwin , a Confederate sympathizer, was arrested and fled to Europe. Nearly all of the men who volunteered as Union soldiers stayed in the West, within the Department of the Pacific , to guard forts and other facilities, occupy secessionist regions, and fight Indians in the state and the western territories.
Some 2, soldiers in the California Column marched east across Arizona in to expel the Confederates from Arizona and New Mexico.
The California Column then spent most of the remainder of the war fighting hostile Indians in the area. Even before Mexico gained control of Alta California in , the onerous Spanish rules in effect from to against trading with foreigners began to break down as the declining Spanish fleet could not enforce their no-trading policies. The Californios, with essentially no industries or manufacturing capabilities, were eager to trade for new commodities, glass, hinges, nails, finished goods, luxury goods and other merchandise.
This hide-and-tallow trade was mainly carried on by Boston-based ships that traveled for about days in sailing ships about 17, miles 27, km to 18, miles 29, km around Cape Horn to bring finished goods and merchandise to trade with the Californio Ranchos for their hides, tallow and horns. The cattle and horses that provided the hides, tallow and horns essentially grew wild. The Californios' hides, tallow and horns provided the necessary trade articles for a mutually beneficial trade.
The first United States, English and Russian trading ships began showing up in California before Essentially all the cost of the California government what little there was was paid for by these tariffs custom duties. Ships after provided easy, cheap, links among the coastal towns within California and on routes leading there. Nearly all cargo to California came by sailing ship until the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in The sea route was more than 17, miles 27, km route from the east coast or Europe around Cape Horn in South America.
This route averaged about days by "standard" sailing ship or about days by Clipper. One of the main problems that occurred during the gold rush was the lack of a paying cargo for ships leaving California. Food, supplies and passengers were the main cargo coming to California; but there were only a limited return trade of returning passengers, mail and gold.
Many of the sailing ships that arrived in San Francisco Bay were abandoned there or converted into warehouses or landfill. The United States was now a Pacific Ocean power. Starting in the U. Only a few were going all the way to California. She was loaded with about gold seeking passengers; twice the number of passengers it had been designed for. In San Francisco all her passengers and crew except the captain and one man deserted the ship and it would take the Captain two more months to gather a much better paid return crew to return to Panama city an establish the route they had been contracted for.
Many more paddle steamers were soon running from the east coast cities to the Chagres River in Panama and the San Juan River in Nicaragua. The trip to the east coast could be executed after about in as short as 40 days if all ship connections could be met with a minimum of waiting. Steamboats plied the Bay Area and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers that flowed nearer the goldfields, moving passengers and supplies from San Francisco to Sacramento , Marysville and Stockton, California —the three main cities supplying the gold fields.
The city of Stockton, on the lower San Joaquin, quickly grew from a sleepy backwater to a thriving trading center, the stopping-off point for miners headed to the gold fields in the foothills of the Sierra. Rough ways such as the Millerton Road which later became the Stockton—Los Angeles Road [90] quickly extended the length of the valley and were served by mule teams and covered wagons. During the peak years of the gold rush, the river in the Stockton area was reportedly crowded with hundreds of abandoned oceangoing craft, whose crew had deserted for the gold fields.
The multitude of idle ships was such a blockade that at several occasions they were burned just to clear a way for riverboat traffic. Soon a system of wagon roads, bridges, ferries and toll roads were set up many of them maintained by tolls collected from the users. Large freight wagons pulled by up to 10 mules replaced pack trains, and toll roads built and kept passable by the tolls made it easier to get to the mining camps, enabling express companies to deliver firewood, lumber, food, equipment, clothes, mail, packages, etc.
Later when communities developed in Nevada some steamboats were even used to haul cargo up the Colorado River as high as where Lake Mead in Nevada is today. The Butterfield Overland Mail Stage Line [95] was a stagecoach service operating from to of over 2, miles 4, km. It carried passengers and U. Mail from Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri to San Francisco, California. The Butterfield Overland Stage Company had more than people in its employ, had relay stations, head of stock and Concord stagecoaches in service at one time.
