California 15

8/13/2019 California 15

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CaliforniaRyan Ross



CHAPTER 1. QUEENCALIFA’S ISLAND

• California was firstdiscovered by Spanishexplorer Hernan Cortez in1533.• It was originally thought to

be an island and was namedafter a mythical Amazonqueen named Califa wholived on an island.• In 1539 it was discoveredthat California was apeninsula and not an islandand a great land mass northof the peninsula was waitingto be settled.




• The North American andPacific tectonic plates’collision is what makesCalifornia into the diversestate that it is, from valley tomountain to desert andcoastline .• Home to Mt. Whitney, thetallest mountain in thecontinental United States.• Just to the east of Mt.Whitney is Death Valley,which is the lowest point inthe continental U.S. at 282 ft.below sea level.• It’s coastline is 1,264 mileslong taking up more than halfof the west coast of theUnited States.




• There where many groups ofNative Americans in Californiabefore the arrival of Europeanexplorers. They had 22different linguistic familiesand 135 separate languages.• Their diets varied dependingon where they lived andincluded acorns, shell fish,trout, salmon, etc.• They were generally peaceful

with their surrounding tribalneighbors due to theabundance of food andresources in the area.



CHAPTER 4. STRIKING IT RICH• On February 2, 1848 Mexico and the

U.S. signed the treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo making California apart ofthe United States.

• The northern states wanted to makeCalifornia a free state and the southwanted to break up the state intoterritories so they could have a pieceand make theirs a slave state.Congress did not give into what thesouth wanted.

• Alcalde law, similar to a Militant law,was the initial practice ofgovernment in California until thestart of the gold rush when apopulation boom occurs.



CHAPTER 4. STRIKING IT RICH• In 1848 James Marshall finds gold at

Fort Sutter and starts the Californiagold rush of 1849.

• As a result of the population boomduring the gold rush, murder rates

raise to an extreme amount,especially in Los Angeles to a rate of1,240 per 100,000, which is an alltime record in America to this day.



CHAPTER 4. STRIKING IT RICH• As in most of America at the time, racial issues where present in California as well.

Many lynchings took place to quell the rising crime in California, however, Mexicanswhere executed in drastically grater number than any other race.

• There was also a tax imposed on any foreigner in the minefields of $20 per monthwhich drove thousands of Mexicans away from the mines.



CHAPTER 7. GREATEXPECTATIONS

• In the 1890’s infrastructure inCalifornia began. The mostpressing issue was water.• A drainage act was passed in1887 to gather funds forirrigation and drainage whichthe state was able to collect$100,000.• William Hammond Hall wasthe state engineer in chargeof surveying the state’s water

and disperse it correctly.• Hall helped SouthernCalifornia divert water fromthe Colorado River into theSalton Sink.




• William Mulholland was thehead of the Department ofWater and Power in the cityof Los Angeles during 1886-1923.• He was responsible foracquiring water for LosAngeles by making aqueductsand dams to obtain waterfrom the Owens River.• In 1923 the St. Francis Dam

broke just hours after hepersonally inspected it whichended his career as a cityengineer.




• In the 1890’s there was aneffort started in San Franciscoto improve the architecture ofthe city.• Willis Polk was an Americanarchitect that came to SanFrancisco from Jacksonville,Illinois. Polk build commercialand residential buildingsbefore and after theearthquake of 1906. TheJames C. Flood Mansion isone example of his workslocated on Nob Hill.

California 15

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