Although the present-day State of California has been occupied for millennia, the lack of a written record and the significant marginalization in the population of native inhabitants after European colonization means that most of the known history of California begins with European exploration.During that time, the area has gone from a Spanish outpost of interest primarily populated by missionaries and fur trappers, to a land of opportunity and wealth, first with the Gold Rush of 1849, then with its fertile agricultural lands and prodigious oil fields, and finally with its high-technology leadership.
The first European to explore the coast of the present day State of California was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown who had been in the army of Cortes during the conquest of Mexico. In June 1542, Cabrillo led an expedition in two ships from the west coast of New Spain. He sailed northward and landed on September 28 at San Diego Bay, claiming the Island of California for Spain. After Cabrillo's voyage in 1542 the concept of Alta (upper) California and Baja (lower) California started to emerge. On June 17, 1579, Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere above Spain's claim to the Island of California. Drake's claim marked the first of six national flags to fly over California: that of England, Russia, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of California, and the United States.
Since 1493, Spain had maintained a number of missions throughout New Spain (Mexico, and portions of what today are the Southwestern United States) in order to facilitate colonization of these lands. It was not until the threat of invasion by Tsarist Russia in 1765, however, that King Charles III of Spain felt such installations were necessary in Upper ("Alta") California. Between 1774 and 1791, the Crown sent forth a number of expeditions to explore the Pacific Northwest, but by 1819 chose to limit its "reach" to Northern California due to the costs involved in sustaining such remote outposts.[PARAGRAPH:2]In the early 1800s, fur trappers of the Russian Empire, which had already claimed Alaska, briefly explored the coast and set up trading posts as far south as Fort Ross in modern-day Sonoma County. They hunted for sea otter pelts as far south as the Channel Islands (across from modern Santa Barbara). A prominent marriage between a leading Californio family and an Imperial noble almost caused Russian trade to advance into Southern California. The scion from Russia, however, died of disease while crossing Siberia to get a dispensation from Russian Orthodox leaders to marry a Catholic (his would-be bride entered a convent after his death).
To support the agricultural and pastoral work of the missions, the Spanish encouraged settlement with large land-grants, called ranchos, that largely remained empty of people. These were used for ranches with cattle and sheep. Hides for leather were to remain the primary export of California until the mid-19th century. The owners of these ranchos were called rancheros and styled themselves after the Spanish nobility, though they were generally richer in respect than in material wealth.
Spanish California lasted until Mexico's decade-long War of Independence ended in 1821. Although California had been a separate region beyond the frontiers of New Spain, it became a state of Mexico with a population (4,000) that was tiny even compared to the sparse population of states in Mexico proper. The Roman Catholic church owned more than half the land in Mexico and was effectively a state within a state. As part of the process of wresting effective control of Mexico from the Vatican, Mexico seized real estate from the church, something that eventually was codified into the Mexican constitution. The missions in California were largely abandoned, and fell into disrepair. During the period of Mexican rule, American sailing companies maintained trade with Indians and gathered pelts, and in 1840 young Richard Henry Dana wrote of his own experiences aboard ship off California in the 1830s. Mexico paid little attention to its far-flung northern possession until June 1846, when American settlers in the Sacramento Valley revolted and raised the "Bear Flag" over Sonoma, establishing the California Republic. Thus ended the 22-year existence of the Territory of Alta California recognized by the 1824 Constitution of Mexico.In 1846, California had a Spanish-speaking population of 4,000the population of a small village stretched along the rugged, 850-mile coastline. Before the Mexican-American War, this grew slowly with emigration mainly from the United States. The Republic, under President William B. Ide, applied to the U.S. for protection from Mexico and California entered the war on the side of the U.S. Commodore John Drake Sloat, acting on instructions from Washington, D.C., ordered his naval troops to occupy Monterey and Yerba Buena to preserve order since war had broken out over the admission of Texas as a U.S. state. After 24 days, the Bear Flaggers joined the war effort and replaced the Bear Flag with the Stars and Stripes.
In 1848, gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills at Sutter's Mill about 40 miles east of Sacramento, beginning the California gold rush. John Sutter was a Swiss German settler who colonized an area around the Sacramento River and Sutter Creek, north and inland from the sparsely-settled Spanish land-grants. James W. Marshall, an American who was Sutter's carpenter, discovered the gold which started a gold rush of immigrants, mostly from the U.S.
California's role in the American Civil War is one of the least researched areas of American and Californian history, but it nonetheless played a distant role which is important for the many ways in which it was a microcosm of the whole United States, both North and South. California was settled primarily by Midwestern and Southern farmers who were sympathetic to decentralized government and states' rights. California also was the destination for a minority of powerful Northeastern capitalists who played a significant role in Californian politics through their control of mines, shipping, and finance.
Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, there were several daring feats of engineering in Californian history. First is the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which runs from eastern California through the Mojave Desert and its Antelope Valley to dry Los Angeles far to the south. Finished in 1911, it was the brain-child of the self-taught William Mulholland and is still in use today. Creeks flowing from the eastern Sierra are diverted into the aqueduct. This attracts controversy from time to time since this withholds water from Mono Lake an especially otherworldly and beautiful ecosystem and from farmers in the Owens Valley. Other feats are the building of Hoover Dam (which is in Nevada, but provides power and water to Southern California), Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and the California Aqueduct, taking water from northern California to dry and sprawling southern California. Another project was the draining of Lake Tulare, which, during high water was the largest fresh-water lake inside an American state. This created a large wet area amid the dry San Joaquin Valley and swamps abounded at its shores. By the 1970s, it was completely drained, but it attempts to resurrect itself during heavy rains.
In the 1920s, oil was discovered, first near Newhall, in northern Los Angeles County. Soon, more oil was found all over the L.A. Basin and other parts of California. It soon became the most profitable industry in the southern part of the state. The first decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of the studio system founded by industrious Polish Jews seeking a life in the land of opportunity. MGM, Universal and Warner Brothers all acquired land in Hollywood, which was then a small subdivision known as "Hollywoodland" on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
During World War II, California's mild climate became a major resource for the war effort. Numerous air-training bases were established in Southern California, where most aircraft manufacturers, including Douglas Aircraft and Hughes Aircraft expanded or established factories. Major naval, shipyards were established or expanded in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco Bay. San Francisco was the home of the liberty ships. In the late 1960s the baby-boom generation reached draft age, and many risked arrest to oppose the war in Vietnam. There were numerous demonstrations and strikes, most famously on the prestigious Berkeley campus of the University of California, across the bay from San Francisco. In 1965, race riots erupted in Watts, in the South-Central area of Los Angeles. Some commentators predicted revolution. Then the federal government promised to withdraw from the Vietnam War, which at last happened in 1974. The radical political movements, having achieved a large part of their aim, lost members and funding.
Starting in the 1950s, high technology companies in Northern California began a spectacular growth that continued through the end of the century. The major products included personal computers, video games, and networking systems. The majority of these companies settled along a highway stretching from Palo Alto to San Jose, notably including Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California, all in the Santa Clara Valley, the so-called "Silicon Valley," named after the material used to produce the integrated circuits of the era. This era peaked in 2000, by which time demand for skilled technical professionals had become so high that the high-tech industry had trouble filling all of its positions and therefore pushed for increased visa quotas so that they could recruit from overseas. When the "Dot-Com bubble" burst in 2001, jobs evaporated overnight and, for the first time over the next two years, more people moved out of the area than moved in. This somewhat mirrored the collapse of the aerospace industry in southern california some twenty years earlier.
