California History

Before the Mexican and Spanish arrived to California, the native Indians were the only inhabitants who were divided into hundreds of tribes among which Miwoks, Pomes, Chumashs, Gabrielenos and Tulares. The arrival of the first colonizers was rather late compared to the east coast over which the French and the English were fighting. The reason being the difficulty to reach the west coast via the Pacific as well as via land, across the vast plains of the unexplored Far West. It was only in 1769 that Father Junipero Serra built the first mission in San Diego including a church, a school and housing. At the beginning of the 19th century the Spanish colons settled along the coastal areas as well as a big Russian community from which the district of Russian Hill in San Francisco originated. In 1822 Mexico became independent getting rid of the Spanish dominance and proclaimed High California a Mexican province. The United States that for a long time had wanted to take control of the western territories didn’t stand by and watched, but declared war to Mexico. The latter, defeated in 1848, had to sign over the Californian province to the US in the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty. In that same year the first gold was found 30 miles east of Sacramento which caused a mad rush, the famous gold rush with people from all over migrating to California in search for fortune. The boom caused a fast growth of the urban centres and in 1850 California became a state; in 1854 Sacramento, which highly benefited from the gold rush, became California’s capital city and it’s been on the move ever since.

The fast economic growth called for the extension of the American railway line to speed up the supplies. Thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived to work on the construction of the rail. In the 1980’s a new wave of immigrants came from Vietnam escaping the damage left by the Vietnam War and communism. The last immigration is the one of the Mexicans who illegally cross the border to escape poverty in search for a better life. Today Mexicans are the larger ethnic group in the multicultural Californian population. California has always been the land of hope where people go to in search for a better life and live the American Dream; the weather, the strong economy and the tolerant atmosphere make people want to go there.
Today, at a time of national economic difficulty, California keeps going strong thanks to the technological industry, the Silicon Valley is the base for major IT market leaders, the Cinema industry, agriculture and tourism.