California History
Information taken from Yahoo Travel - Destination California
Yahoo Travel - California
The indigenous Americans who had the good fortune to live in what became California also enjoyed the region's natural abundance of fish, game and agriculture. "Tribes" like those typical in other regions of North America did not exist in California, primarily because the political unity required for survival elsewhere was largely irrelevant there.
Spaniard Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit what is now the state of California. He arrived in 1542. But more than 200 years passed before Spain moved to settle the region, finally establishing a presidio for its army in San Diego in 1769. Soon after, the first of California's 21 Franciscan missions was built in the city.
The missions were established in part because Spain was worried about the territorial incursions of the Russians, who had settled along California's northern coast. But the end of Spain's hold on California came from a different direction: The citizenry of Mexico established an independent nation in 1821 and gained control of California and other Spanish holdings in North America.
When Mexico's short reign began, Yankee traders were already prominent in California: U.S. citizens, many of whom had married into landholding Mexican families, dominated California's business sector. The idea of annexing California to the U.S. was very attractive by the early 1840s and part of the reason for the U.S.'s declaration of war against Mexico in 1846. When the U.S. defeated Mexico in 1848, a large section of western North America, including California, passed into the landholders' hands.
That same year a crucial event shaped the region's destiny: Gold was discovered on a remote stretch of the American River in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The subsequent California Gold Rush of 1849 transformed nearby Sacramento into an overnight mining boomtown, and San Francisco mushroomed into a raucous and randy gold-crazed port city. Statehood soon followed (1850), and San Francisco continued to boom throughout the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.
Starting in the second decade of the 20th century, folks began flooding to Southern California in pursuit of another sort of glittering prize: movie stardom. With the rise of the motion-picture industry, the Los Angeles area became the entertainment capital of the U.S. and, eventually, the world. But the state has proven attractive in plenty of other ways, as well: The state has been a land of promise for everyone from Dust Bowl farmers to immigrants from Mexico and Asia to New Age pilgrims to high-tech entrepreneurs.
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