2. One of the most famous misconceptions
in cartographic history is of California as
an island. The origin of this error is Las
Sergas de Esplandian, a romantic novel
written in 1510 by Garci Rodriguez de
Montalvo, stating“that on the right hand
of the Indies there is an island called
California very close to the side of the
Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by
black women, without any man among
them, for they live in the manner of the
Amazons.”
This idealized view of California as a
kind of Garden of Eden at the edge of
the known world was negated by Father
Eusebio Kino’s expedition from 1698 to
1701.
Kino proved that Baja California, the
(currently Mexican) peninsula which runs
parallel to the mainland for hundreds of
miles, is connected to it in the north.
Island of California 1510
3. California was created by the
collision of the North American
and Pacific Plates.
The state is 158,693 square
miles. While the shoreline
stretches 1,264 miles across the
Pacific coastline.
The California-born philosopher
and historian, Josiah Royce, has
observed California and says that
there is nothing subtle about the
landforms and landscapes of
California. Everything is scaled in
bold and heroic arrangements
that are easily understood.
California’s shoreline
4. Badwater
Lake in Death The highest point in
Valley
and
California is Mount
Mt. Whitney
Whitney, just 60 miles
away is the lowest
point, Death Valley,
which is 262 feet below
sea level.
The temperature in
Death Valley can reach
up to 134 degrees
Fahrenheit, as recorded
July 10th, 1913.
There are two seasons
in this region; wet and
dry.
5. In 1857, an earthquake
shook the Tejon Pass in
S. California, in 1872
Owens Valley shook, in
1906 San Francisco
shook, Long Beach in
1933, San Fernando
Valley in 1971, San
Francisco again in 1989,
and again in San
Fernando in 1994.
California is well-known
for its earthquakes,
since it is filled with Most common fault:
many faults. San Andreas Fault
6. Because California is
mountain country, it is
bear country as well.
Native Americans
considered grizzly bears
to be another form of
humans, and treated
this animal with
respect.
The California flag has a
Historic Bear Flag raised at Sonoma on bear on it, in honor of
June 14, 1846, by a group of American
settlers in revolt against Mexican rule. the grizzly bear which
The flag was designed by William Todd once inhabited this
on a piece of new unbleached cotton. The region in large numbers.
star imitated the lone star of Texas. A
grizzly bear represented the many bears
seen in the state.
7. In its first three decades, the newly established
state of California invented and reinvented itself
through law, politics, institution building,
agriculture and the construction of a trans-Sierra
railroad.
In the strife-ridden 1870’s, California approached
abyss, flirted with self-destruction, then
regrouped.
On the last five years of Mexican governance,
there had been a flurry of land grants, many of
them vague and indeterminate.
On April 13, 1849, Halleck filed a report
questioning the validity of many land grants. And
in fall of 1850, many riots broke out when the
sheriff sought to evict squatters from the lots. First railroad in the West
8. For the rest of the
century, much of
California would remain
resistant to small
farming.
The vast domains of the
ranch might pass from
Mexican to Yankee
ownership, but these
extensive landholdings,
together with the quasi-
feudal economy they
Agriculture in the late 1800’s encouraged, continued
to dictate the structure
of California
agriculture.
9. Despite the humiliation
and the continuing efforts
to dismantle it, California-
volatile, uncertain, a
continuing question-
survived and continued
the development of its
institutional life. Construction of Sacramento
Between 1850 and 1854,
the capital of the state
was moved around San
Francisco Bay from San
José to Vallejo, back to
Vallejo then to
Sacramento, then back to
Vallejo, then to Benicia,
then permanently to
Sacramento.
10. In 1851, Jesuit
missionaries from
northern Italy
founded the first
Wesleyan College, today
college at Mission
Santa Clara.
Soon after, the
Methodists opened
California Wesleyan
college in San José.
In 1852, the first
female seminary,
later Mills College,
opened in Benicia.
11. In 185, the legislature
commenced plans to build a
state prison at Point San
Quentin on San Francisco Bay
in Marin County, where the
prison ship Waban, housing
152 convicts, was already
anchored.
Architect Reuben Clark, a
veteran of Charles Bulfinch’s
studio in Boston, was chosen
to design the structure.
By 1854, the first cell block-
called “the stones”- was
ready for occupancy. Point San Quentin
It remained in use until 1959. California’s oldest
prison
12. The first 40 years of
statehood saw California
organize its political and
socioeconomic structures
and lay the foundation of
its built environment.
The dams, adeqducts,
reservoirs, power plants,
industrial sites, bridges,
roadways, public
Dams being built buildings, and stadiums
created during this
second phase served the
growing population of the
state.
13. Irrigation was a
reorganization of
nature, and all such
reordering had their
risks.
In October 1904, the
California
Development
Company cut a second
canal from the
western bank of the
Colorado across The start of irrigation
northern Mexico into
the Imperial Valley.
14. After the 1906
earthquake struck in
San Francisco , arch
were on hand for the
rebuilding of the city
between 1906 and
1909. Yet the
buildings that were
built were able to
withstand the quake.
However, these new
structures had to be
observed again and
repaired.
After the earthquake in San Francisco
15. South of San Francisco, in the townships of
Burlingame, San Mateo, Menlo Park,
Atherton, and Woodside, the Italianate or
neo-Gothic villas of the nineteenth century
had been succeeded by a second generation
of estates designed in the Beaux Arts style
for the elegant rustication of Bay Area
elites.
These stately homes-for which architect
Willis Polk’s “Filioli” (1916) in San Mateo
County, designed for mining and water
company heir William Bowers Bourn II, can
easily serve as a summation and concluding
paradigm-more than fulfilled Bayard Taylor’s
prediction in 1850 that the peninsula south
of San Francisco was destined to develop as
a Tuscan landscape of villas, cypresses,
lawns, flowers and fountains.
Mediterranean Revival style was also a
characteristic of the newly developing
neighborhoods of San Francisco.
1900’s houses in San Fran
16. Newcomers fled to California, mainly from the
Midwest. Nine tenths of Los Angelinos by
1926, for example, were of European descent.
On the other hand, the city supported
challenge but persistent Japanese American,
Mexican American, and African American Lombard Street in San Fran
communities.
Between 1910 and 1924, 30,000 Japanese
women migrated to the U.S most of them for
marriages arranged according to ancient
Japanese custom to issei, fist generation
immigrants.
