California History

Q: What brings people to California?
     California could not possibly have been more aptly named the `Golden State.' Of course, it was the 19th-century gold rush that gave it this moniker, but even today there's `gold' in so many aspects of California. The sunlight, the beaches, the gods and goddesses of cinema: these are the images that play their siren song to the world from screens large and small. But `golden opportunity' is truly the spine, fuel and spirit of what makes California the singular power that it is.  
     Imagine something on a Monday and by Tuesday it may well be a reality here where the Ameri­can 'can-do' spirit shines brightest and the boundaries of the possible are without limits.  Hula hoops? Aerobics? The Internet? Per­sonal computers? Cryogenics? In-line skat­ing? Kite surfing? Plunk a creative or wacky idea down on California soil and its tendrils will soon be enveloping cities and farm vil­lages all over the world. Life in California is like living in the future. It's an intellectual playground; a petri dish where ideas, cul­tures and trends take hold, thrive, multiply, morph and spread at dazzling speed. Dream­ers run the show but the `brick and mortar' aspects of the state are no less dazzling. 
     California's economy is larger than that of China or France (in fact, its gross domestic product is the fifth largest in the world). Its area exceeds that of either the United King­dom and Italy. But beyond its economic and creative influence is the California of unparalleled natural beauty.  And it's chiefly because of this that the state receives nearly 300 million foreign and domestic visitors each year. They come to experience the `California Dreamin' found in such national parks as Yosemite and Redwoods. They come to explore 1200 miles of coastal roads and to witness the teeming wildlife - whales, dolphins, sea lions etc- of the Pacific. They come to see the tallest point in the lower 48 states (Mt Whitney) and the lowest (Death Valley). They head inland to discover some of the world's most fertile agricultural and wine producing country and to climb or hike among peaks and wilderness areas of striking beauty.
     And when visitors head for California's cities they find - in such places as San Fran­cisco and Los Angeles - microcosms of what the state once was, and what it's still becoming. There endures the architectural legacy of the California missions right alongside cutting-edge developments such as the Walt Disney Hall in Downtown LA. There are the Chinatowns and Nob Hills of yesterday rubbing shoulders with alto­gether new immigrant communities hous­ing people from Cambodia to Ethiopia. And the Latino and African-American cultures that have shaped so much of the state's his­tory are becoming evermore influential in what the future here may bring.
     Perhaps in California as with nowhere else does the rule, `Change is the on constant' apply. Today's matinee idol tomorrow's has-been. Stellar technology scrapped overnight with the invention of a single new silicon chip. Buildings as neighborhoods disappear and are reincarnated within months. Here today and ...there tomorrow.  It's sometimes hard to trust your senses while drinking in all that California is. The dreams create the realities which come the myths in an endless cycle of invention and excitement. Perhaps the best advice to travelers in general is 'surrender California will provide you with dream enough for a lifetime. Real ones.

Q: How long have people been in California?
     It's generally accepted that the first people in the Americas came from east Asia, over a land bridge to Alaska across what is now the Bering Strait. This land bridge, called Beringia, occurred when sea levels lowered during an ice age between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago. The first immigrants were probably nomadic hunters following large game animals which moved south and east to all comers of the Americas. Among the earliest known inhabitants of North America were the makers of stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico, which have been dated to around 11,000 years ago.
     Californian archaeological sites indicate the state was also inhabited very early on. Stone tools found in the Bakersfield area have been dated to around 8000 to 12,000 years ago. Many other sites across the state have yielded evidence, from large middens of sea shells along the coast to campfire sites in the mountains, of people from around 4000 to 8000 years ago.

Q: What do we know about the original inhabitants?
     The most spectacular artifact left behind by California's early inhabitants is their rock art, dating from 500 to 3000 years ago. It gives some idea of the cultural diversity of the indigenous populations, with five identifiable styles of pictographs (designs painted on rock with one or more colors) and five styles of petroglyphs (designs pecked, chipped or abraded onto the rock). Many of the sites are closed to the public in the interest of preservation, but accessible areas include the Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park in the Gold Country (see the Gold Country chapter); the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, near Santa Barbara (see the Central Coast chapter); and various sites in the Ridgecrest area.
     The archaeological evidence, combined with accounts from early European visitors and later ethnographic research, gives quite a clear picture of the Indians at the time of European contact. The native peoples of California belonged to more than 20 language groups with around 100 dialects. Their total population ranged somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000, though some estimates run considerably higher. The Indians lived in small groups and villages, often migrating with the seasons from the valleys and the coast up to the mountains. The largest villages of which there are traces, in the Central Valley, are reckoned to have had 1500 to 2000 residents.
     Acorn meal was their dietary staple, sup­plemented by small game, such as rabbits and deer, and fish and shellfish along the coast. Other plants were used for food and the fiber used in making baskets and clothing. California Indians used earthenware pots, fish nets, bows, arrows and spears with chipped stone points, but their most developed craft was basket making. They wove baskets with local grasses and plant fibers and decorated them with attractive geometric designs. Some baskets were so tightly woven that they would hold water. Examples can be seen in many museums.
     There was some trade between the groups, especially between coastal and inland people, but generally they did not interact much, partly because even neighboring villages spoke different languages. Conflict among the groups was almost nonexistent. California Indians did not have a class of warriors or a tradition of warfare, at least not until the Europeans arrived.  Several museums have good exhibits on Native American archaeology and an­thropology, such as the Phoebe Hearst Mu­seum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, the Museum of Man in San Diego and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.

Q: Where did California get its name?
     Following the conquest of Mexico in the early 16th century, the Spanish turned their attention toward exploring the edges of their new empire. There was much fanciful speculation about a golden island beyond Mexico's western coast, and California was actually named before it was explored, after a mythical island in a Spanish novel. The precise etymology and meaning of the name `California' have never been convincingly established, though there is now wide con­sensus that it is a derivation of 'Calafia,' the novel's heroine queen, who ruled a race of gold-rich black Amazons.

Q: What Europeans first saw California?
     In 1542 the Spanish crown engaged Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer and retired conquistador, to lead an expedition up the West Coast to find the fabled land. He was also charged with finding the equally mythical Strait of Anian, an imagined sea route between the Pacific and the Atlantic.
     When Cabrillo's ships sailed into San Diego Harbor (which Cabrillo named San Miguel), he and his crew became the first Europeans to see mainland California. The ships sat out a storm in the harbor, then sailed on, following the coast north. They made a stop on the Channel Islands where, in 1543, Cabrillo fell ill, died and was buried. The expedition continued north as far as Oregon, but returned with no evidence of a sea route to the Atlantic, no cities of gold and no islands of spice. The Spanish authorities were unimpressed and showed no further interest in California for the next 50 years.

Q: What were the early Europeans up to in California?
     Around 1565, Spanish ships began plying the Pacific, carrying Mexican silver to the Philippines to trade for the exotic goods of Asia. These `Manila galleons' often took a northerly route back to the Americas to catch the westerly winds, and they sometimes landed along the California coast. The galleons were harassed by English pirates, including Sir Francis Drake, who sailed up the California coast in 1579. He missed the entrance to San Francisco Bay, but pulled in near Point Reyes (at what is now Drakes Bay) to repair his ship, which was literally bursting with the weight of plundered Spanish silver. He claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth, named it Nova Albion (New England), then left for other adventures. (He wrote that he left a brass plate nailed to a post to record his visit. A plate was supposedly found there in 1937-probably a fake-and is now in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.)
     In 1596 the Spanish decided they needed to secure some ports on the Pacific coast, and sent Sebastian Vizcaino to find them. Vizcaino's first expedition was a disaster that didn't get past Baja California, but in his second attempt, in 1602, he rediscovered the harbor at San Diego and gave it its present name. Contrary to his orders, he renamed many of the features of the coast and made glowing reports of the value his `discoveries,' in particular Monterey Bay, which he described as a protected harbor. Perhaps no-one believed Vizcaino's ports, because they were pigeonholed for 160 years, as Spain continued to ignore this remote territory.

Q: What led to the founding of the California missions?
     Around the 1760s, as Russian ships came California's coast in search of sea otter pelts and British trappers and explorers were spreading throughout the West, the Spanish king became worried that they might occupy the coast and become a threat to Spain's claim on the land. Also, the Catholic Church was anxious to start missionary work among the native peoples. A combination of Catholic missions and military forts (presidios) were founded in the new territory. The Indian converts would live in the missions, learn trade and agricultural skills and ultimately establish pueblos that would be like little Spanish towns.
     The first Spanish colonizing expedition called the `Sacred Expedition,' was a major undertaking, with land-based parties an supply ships converging on San Diego 1769. On July 1 that year, a sorry lot about 100 missionaries and soldiers, led the Franciscan priest Junipero Serra and the military commander Gaspar de Portol gimped ashore at San Diego Bay. They had just spent several weeks at sea on the journey from Baja California, where Serra had already founded one mission. About half of their cohorts had died en route, a many of the survivors were sick or near death. It was an inauspicious beginning for the Mission San Diego de Alcala the `mother' of the chain of 21 California missions.

Q: How did the initial efforts go at the missions?
     While Serra stayed in San Diego, Gasp de Portola continued north with instructions to establish a second Spanish outpost Monterey. Portola went right past Monterey as he didn't see anything like the fin protected harbor that Vizcaino had described.  His party continued until they arrived at a large bay, later named San Francisco.  Returning disappointed to San Diego, Portola found Serra's party desperately awaiting overdue supply ship, and without a single Indian convert after eight months of missionary activity. They were on the point abandoning the expedition, but after a day of prayer, the supply ship arrived just in time. Portola returned north to the unpromising site at Monterey with Serra in tow. Although they realized that the lack of a good harbor made the site less than ideal, a second mission, along with a presidio, was established.
     Over time, three more presidios were founded, in San Diego (1769), Santa Barbara (1782) and San Francisco (1776). Ostensibly, the purpose of the presidios was to protect the missions and deter foreign intruders. In fact, these garrisons created more threats than they deterred, as the soldiers aroused hostility by raiding the Indian camps to rape and kidnap women. Not only were the presidios militarily weak, but their weakness was well known to Russia and Britain and did nothing to strengthen Spain's claims to California.
     With the Indians decimated by disease, the Spanish attempted to build up the pueblos in California with the families of soldiers and with civilians from Mexico. The first group came overland from Sonora, led by Juan Bautista de Anza on a route across the southern desert. They settled on the San Francisco peninsula in 1776 and named the place Yerba Buena (Good Herb), for the Satureja douglasi that grew wild in the area. The Spanish established other civilian pueblos at San Jose (1777) and Los Angeles (1781), but they attracted few settlers from Mexico, and those who came were neither farmers who could cultivate the land nor soldiers who could defend it.
     The missions were more successful at agriculture, and by 1800 they were growing grapes, fruit trees and wheat, raising cattle and supplying enough food for themselves and the presidios. During the Mexican war for independence from Spain, from 1810 to 1821, supplies from Mexico were cut off completely, and California was, of necessity, self-sufficient.

Q: Were the missions a success or failure?
     In all, there are 21 missions in California, mostly along El Camino Real, the 'King's Highway,' which is traced by today's Hwy 101. Except for the one at Sonoma, which dates back to the Mexican period, all the missions were founded by Spanish friars. The first mission was established by Padre Junipero Serra, who spent the rest of his life nurturing the mission chain. His successor, Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, continued Serra's work, but the missions were never wholly successful.
     All the missions had similar structures, with a church and residences surrounded by fields, vineyards and ranch land. Although military protection was necessary, and became increasingly important as the Indians became less and less happy about the intruders, the missions tried to keep the military, and even more importantly civilian settlers, at arm's length.
     To the Spanish, converting the 'heathen' was as important as economic development or military control, but in the end extinction rather than conversion was the result of their efforts. Consolidating the Indians in small communities greatly increased the spread of disease and decimated the population.
    The Spanish missionaries had little respect for the Native Americans, who were a gentle people according to the descriptions of early settlers. The converted Indians, known as 'neophytes,' were over­worked by the missionaries and maltreated by the military and civilians. If disease didn't kill them, they often drifted away from the alien missions.
    A severe earthquake in 1812 damaged many of the mission buildings, and after independent Mex­ico ended its support in 1834, they gradually crumbled into ruin. Ownership of most of the mission lands, and what remained of the buildings, was returned to the Catholic Church by Abraham Lincoln.
    Today the missions are a mixed lot - some of them remarkably preserved, others completely restored, some only vaguely related to the originals. Even during the Spanish period the missions had been a movable feast. The second mission marked the birth of Monterey and then was moved to Carmel a year later. The present Santa Clara mission is actually the sixth church on the fifth site; earlier versions were washed away by floods, tumbled by earthquakes or engulfed by fire.
     As a way of colonizing the wilds of California and converting the natives to Christianity, the mission period was an abject failure. The Spanish population re­mained small; the missions achieved little better than mere survival; foreign intruders were not greatly deterred; and more Indians died than were converted. Conflict between the Spanish and Indians persisted, with major revolt in Santa Barbara as late as 1824.

Q: What happened during the Rancho Period?
     Upon Mexican independence in 1821 many of the new nation's people looked to California to satisfy their thirst for private land. By the mid-1830s the missions had been secularized, with a series of governors doling out hundreds of free land grants. This process gave birth to the rancho system. The new landowners were called rancheros or Califomios; they prospered quickly and became the social, cultural and political fulcrums of California. The average rancho was 16,000 acres in size and largely given over to live stock to supply the trade in hide and tallow.
     Enterprising rancheros often sold 75,000 or more hides a year, for an average price of $2 each. Although some made fortunes they paid no taxes and footed the bill for no public works projects - they were largely it literate and usually lived in nonpermanent dwellings without wooden floors, window or running water. Schools were nonexistent too. Most of the work was done by mestizo born of European and Indian parents, and the Indians were almost totally marginalized.
      When frontiersman Jedediah Smith turn up in San Diego in 1827, the Mexican authorities were alarmed to discover that the route from the east was not impassable Frontiersman Kit Carson helped forge the Santa Fe Trail to Los Angeles in 1832 Another interloper whose name was linked t California's destiny was Swiss-born John Sutter, who, in 1839, persuaded the California governor to grant him 50,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley. It happened that his ranch was at the western end of another trail, over the Truckee Pass, on which the first American wagon trundled into California in 1841 and which the Donner Party followed in 1846.  American explorers, trappers, traders whalers, settlers and opportunists increasingly showed interest in California, seizing on many of the prospects for profit that the Californios ignored in favor of ranching.  Some of the Americans who started businesses became Catholics, married locals and assimilated into Californio society. An American, Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before the Mast (1840), worked on a ship in the hide trade in the 1830s and wrote disparagingly of Californians as `an idle and thriftless people who can make nothing for themselves.'

Q: How did California become a state?
     Impressed by California's potential wealth and imbued with Manifest Destiny (the imperialist doctrine to extend the US border from coast to coast), US president Andrew Jackson sent an emissary to offer the financially strapped Mexican government $500,000 for California. Though American settlers were by then showing up by the hundreds, especially in Northern California, Jackson's emissary was tersely rejected. A political storm was brewing.
     In 1836, Texas had seceded from Mexico and declared itself an independent republic. When the US annexed Texas in 1845, Mex­ico broke off diplomatic relations and ordered all foreigners without proper papers to be de­ported from California. Outraged Northern California settlers revolted, captured the nearest Mexican official and, supported by a company of US soldiers led by Captain John C Fremont, declared California's indepen­dence from Mexico in June 1846 by raising their `Bear Flag' over the town of Sonoma. The Bear Flag Republic existed for all of one month. (The banner lives on, however, as the California state flag.)
    Meanwhile, the US had declared war on Mexico after the two countries clashed over the disputed Texas territory. That gave the US all the justification it needed to invade Mexico. By July, US naval units occupied every port on the California coast, including the capital, Monterey. But in the big picture, California was a side show, as the war was really won and lost in mainland Mexico.
     When US troops captured Mexico City in September 1847, putting an end to the war, the Mexican government had little choice but to cede much of its northern territory to the US. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, turned over Cali­fornia, Arizona and New Mexico to the US. Only two years later, California was admitted as the 31st state of the United States. (An in­teresting feature of this treaty guaranteed the rights of Mexican citizens living in areas taken over by the US. Many Mexicans feel that this provision still entitles them to live and work in those states, regardless of their country of birth.)

Q: What did the Gold Rush bring to California?
     By an amazing coincidence, gold was discovered in Northern California within days of the signing of the treaty with Mexico, incidentally on land owned by John Sutter (remember him?). The discovery of gold quickly transformed the newest American outpost. The population surged from about 14,000 at the time Mexican rule ended to more than 90,000 by 1849, as people from throughout the US and other countries flocked to California.
     The growth and wealth stimulated every aspect of life, from agriculture and banking to construction and journalism. As a result of mining, hills were stripped bare, erosion wiped out vegetation, streams silted up and mercury washed down to San Francisco Bay. San Francisco became a hotbed of gambling, prostitution, drink and chicanery.
     Ostensibly under military rule, California had little effective government at all. The currency was a mixture of debased coinage, gold slugs, and foreign cash; the main law was miners law,' an arbitrary and often harsh way of dealing with crimes - real or imagined.
     Land ownership was uncertain. The rancheros still claimed title to most of California's usable lands, but thousands of new immigrants were squatting as home­steaders in the expectation that they would be able to claim a 160-acre lot for $200. In 1851 Congress sent a land commission west to adjudicate the land claims. Everyone who had received a land grant two decades earlier was now forced to prove its legitimacy with documents and witnesses. By 1857 some 800 cases had been reviewed by tribunal, 500 in favor of the original, pre-rancho landowners. Many other ranchos now passed into the hands of the US government.
     California experienced a second boom with the discovery of the Comstock silver lode in 1860, though the lode was actually over the border in what would soon become Nevada. Exploiting it required deep-mining techniques, which meant companies, stocks, trading and speculation. San Francisco made more money out of stocks than Nevada did out of mining: huge mansions sprouted on Nob Hill, and Californian businessmen became renowned for their audacity - not their scruples.

Q: How did the transcontinental railroad transform California?
    The transcontinental railroad was simple in conception, vast in scale and revolutionary in impact. It shortened the trip from New York to San Francisco from two months to four or five days and opened up markets on both coasts. Tracks were built simultaneously from the east and the west, eventually converging in Utah in 1869. The track going east from Sacramento was financed by the Central Pacific Railroad, which hired thousands of Chinese laborers to get the job done. One of its principals, Leland Stanford, became state governor in 1863.
    The Civil War (1861-65) slowed down the import of goods from the East Coast to California, thus spurring local industry to pick up the slack. Agriculture diversified, with new crops, especially oranges, being grown for export. As California oranges found their way onto New York grocery shelves, coupled with a hard-sell advertising campaign, more and more Easterners heeded the advice of crusading magazine and newspaper publisher Horace Greeley to `Go west, young man.' California's population increased by 47% during the 1860s and by another 54% in the 1870s.
    Inevitably the boom was followed by bust in the late 1870s. Speculation had raised land prices to levels no farmer or immigrant could afford, the railroad brought in products that undersold the goods made in California and some 15,000 Chinese workers, no longer needed for rail construction, flooded the labor market. A period of labor unrest ensued which culminated in anti-Chinese laws and reformed state constitution in 1879.
    Los Angeles was not connected to the transcontinental railroad until 1876, when the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks from San Francisco to the fledgling city. The SP monopoly was broken in 1887, when the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company laid tracks linking LA across the Arizona desert to the East Coast. The competition greatly reduced the cost of transport and led to more diverse development across the state, particularly in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. The lower fares spurred the so-called `boom of the '80s' a major real estate boom lasting from 1886 to 1888. More than 120,000 migrants, mostly from the Midwest, came to Southern California in those years. Many set­tled in the 25 new towns laid out by AT&SF in the eastern part of Los Angeles County.
     Much of the land granted to the railroads was sold in big lots to speculators who also acquired, with the help of corrupt politicians and administrators, a lot of the farm land that was released for new settlement. A major share of the state's agricultural land thus became consolidated as large holdings in the hands of a few city-based landlords, establishing the pattern (which continues to this day) of big, industrial-scale `agribusiness' rather than small family farms. These big businesses were well placed to provide the substantial investment and the political connections required to bring irrigation water to the farmland. They also established a need for cheap farm workers, which was met by poor immigrants.  In the absence of coal, iron ore or abundant water, heavy industry developed slowly, although the 1892 discovery of oil in the Los Angeles area stimulated the development of petroleum processing and chemical industries.

Q: How did the California population grow in the 20th century?
     The population, wealth and importance of California increased dramatically throughout the 20th century. The big San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed most of the city, but it was barely a hiccup in the state's development - the population increased by 60% in the decade to 1910, reach­ing 2,378,000. The revolutionary years in Mexico, from 1910 to 1921, caused a huge influx of emigrants from south of the border, re-establishing the Latino heritage that had been largely smothered by American dominance. The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, made bulk shipping feasible between the East Coast and West Coast.
     During the 1920s, California's population grew by 2.25 million people to 5.677 million: a mammoth 66% increase, the highest growth rate since the gold rush. The Great Depression saw another wave of emigrants, this time from the impoverished prairie states of the Dust Bowl. Outbreaks of social and labor unrest led to a rapid growth of the Democratic party in California. Some of the Depression-era public works projects had lasting benefits, great and small, from San Francisco's Bay Bridge to the restoration of mission buildings.
     WWII had a major impact on California, and not just from the influx of military and defense workers and the development of new industries. Women were co-opted into war work and proved themselves in a range of traditionally male jobs. Anti-Asian sentiments resurfaced at this time, many Japanese Americans were interned, and more Mexicans crossed the border to fill labor shortages. Many of the service people who passed through California actually liked the place so much that they returned to settle after the war. In the 1940s the population grew by 53% (reaching 10,643,000 in 1950), and during the 1950s by 49% (15,863,000 in 1960). 

Q: What are the consequences of this rapid population growth?
     California's population has grown exponentially since it was admitted to the union in 1850, and most of the growth has come from immigration. This has resulted in a richly multicultural society, but also one in which race relations have often been strained.
    Immigrants are typically welcomed in times of rapid growth, only to be rejected when times get tough. Chinese railroad workers, for instance, were in great demand in the 1860s but ended up victimized in the 1870s. The Webb Alien Land Law of 1913 prevented some Asian minorities from own­ing land. During WWII, 93,000 people of Japanese heritage - many of them American citizens - were forcibly placed in internment camps. African Americans came in large numbers to take jobs in the postwar boom, but often became unemployed when the economy took a downturn.
    Mexican and Latin American workers still do most of the farm labor and domestic work, but in 1994, in the face of increasing unemployment and state government deficits, Californians voted in favor of Proposi­tion 187, which denied illegal immigrants access to state government services, includ­ing schools and hospitals. It is estimated that as many as 2.3 million illegal immigrants are currently in California, despite such efforts as Operation Gatekeeper, a costly attempt to police the US-Mexican border through a metal fence, lots more border patrol agents and infrared scopes. Still, for every undocumented worker arrested, at least two manage to slip across into the US.
     Today's California has an astonishingly diverse population that is both its strength and its weakness. Racial tensions have become a common occurrence. Occasionally, these receive high-profile exposure as with the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four white police officers charged with beat­ing Rodney King. But at the same time, the arrival of people from every corner of the globe makes California one of the most tol­erant, cosmopolitan and open-minded soci­eties anywhere. On an errand run, you might be dropping off shirts with your Japanese dry cleaner, picking up groceries from the Mexi­can shopkeeper, having your nails done by a Vietnamese cosmetologist and getting a park­ing ticket from a Greek police officer. The world has definitely come to California.

Q: What role has the military played in California's development?
     Although California has never been the scene of a major conflict, it must be one of the most militarized places on earth. During and after WWI, Douglas and the Lockheed brothers in Los Angeles, and Curtiss in San Diego, established aircraft industries. Two decades later, with another world war brewing, the aviation industry helped lift California out of the Great Depression. By the end of WWII, billions of federal dollars had been poured into Southern California military contracts.
     Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the headquarters of the US Pacific fleet moved from Hawaii to San Diego, where it has remained ever since. Camp Pendleton, a big Marine Corps base, was established in southern Orange County, and the Colorado Desert, in Southern California, temporarily became one of the biggest mili­tary training grounds in history. Shipbuilding started in San Francisco, aircraft plants in Los Angeles turned out planes by the thousands, and the movie industry turned to producing propaganda films.
     After WW II the state retained a big slice of the military-industrial complex, with some very high-tech Cold War industries, from avionics and missile manufacturing to helicopter and nuclear submarine maintenance. Military activities include recruit training for the Marine Corps, advanced training for navy fighter pilots, submarine bases, aircraft test­ing facilities, several air force bases, weapons and gunnery ranges, and home ports for the US Navy. Military spending peaked in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, but by 1990 it had become clear that the honeymoon was over.  Budget cutbacks resulted in the closure of numerous bases and forced hundreds of defense-related companies to downsize and restructure, a process that is still ongoing.

Q: How did California become the home of the film industry?
     Few industries have symbolized California, and especially Los Angeles, more than movie making. Independent producers were attracted here beginning in 1908 for numerous reasons. Southern California's sunny climate allowed indoor scenes to be shot outdoors-essential given the unsophisticated photo technology of the day. Any location, from ocean to desert to alpine forest, could be realized nearby. What's more, the proximity of the Mexican border enabled filmmakers to rush their equipment to safety when challenged by the collection agents of patent holders such as Thomas Edison.
     The industry has done a lot to promote California's image throughout the country and the world. As film, and later TV, became the predominant entertainment medium of the 20th century, California moved to center stage in the world of popular culture.

Q: What social movements or groups distinguish California?
     Unconstrained by the burden of traditions, bankrolled by affluence and promoted by film and television, California has always been a leader in new attitudes and social movements. As early as the 1930s, Hollywood was promoting fashions and fads for the middle classes, even as strikes and social unrest rocked San Francisco and author John Steinbeck articulated a new concern for the welfare and worth of working-class people.
     With 1950s affluence, the `Beat' movement in San Francisco reacted against the banality and conformism of suburban life, turning to coffeehouses for jazz, philosophy, poetry and pot. When the postwar baby boomers hit their late teens, many took up where the Beat generation left off, rejecting their parents' values, doing drugs, dropping out and screwing around in a mass display of adolescent rebellion that climaxed, but didn't conclude, with the San Francisco `Summer of Love' in 1967. Though the hippie 'counter­culture' was an international phenomenon, California was at the leading edge of its music, its psychedelic art and its new libertarianism. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were big on the West Coast.
     In the late '60s and early '70s, New Left politics, the anti-Vietnam War movement and Black Liberation forced their way into the political limelight, and flower power and give­peace-a-chance politics seemed instantly naive. The 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, the sometimes violent repression of demonstrations, such as those at Berkeley in 1968, and the death of a spectator at a Rolling Stones concert at the hands of their security guards (Hell's Angels they had hired for the occasion) all served to strip the era of its innocence.  California has spawned a number of social movements. Gay Pride exploded in San Francisco in the '70s, and San Francisco is still the most openly, exuberantly gay city in the world.

Q: How did California transform the economy?
    In the late 1980s and '90s, California catapulted right to the forefront of the healthy lifestyle, with more aerobic classes and self­actualization workshops than you could shake your totem at. Leisure activities like in-line skating, snowboarding and mountain biking are industries spawned by California. Be careful what you laugh at. From pet rocks to soy burgers, California's flavor of the month will probably be next year's world trend.
    Technology California has always been at the forefront of the technology revolution. In the 1950s, Stanford University in Palo Alto needed to raise some money to finance the university's postwar growth. The university built Stanford Industrial Park, leasing space only to high-tech companies that might be in some way beneficial to the university. Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed and General Electric were among the first to move in. This step is now considered the germ cell of Silicon Valley (although the term itself didn't appear until 1971 in a series of articles by Don C Hoefler). Major Silicon Valley milestones were the inventions of the microchip by Intel in 1971 and the first personal computer, the Apple I, in 1976.  In 1969 a UCLA computer science professor named Len Kleinrock first succeeded at sending data from a computer in Los An­geles to another in Stanford, 360mi away. He typed in `L' and, sure enough, the letter appeared on the screen in Palo Alto. He typed the letter `O'. Same thing. Then he typed 'G'- and the system crashed. But the Internet was born.  It would take several more decades be­fore computer-based communication would be as much a part of our daily lives as the telephone, but there can be no doubt that a revolution had been set in motion.
    Digital technology did indeed reinvent the world and the way we view and create almost everything. In the fat years of the 1990s, it be­came the lemming-like mantra for leaders in every area of commerce and creativity. Movies increasingly rely on digital enhancements, at the very least, to create virtual worlds that would have been unthinkable only a scant decade ago. At the same time, more and more companies jumped on the dot-corn bandwagon. Many went through the economic roof, fueled by misplaced opti­mism, and with equal velocity, crashed right through the floor when the stock market bubble burst after the turn of the millennium. But history is still being written.