The first European to explore parts of the coast was the
Portuguese Joćo Rodrigues Cabrilho in 1542. The first to explore
the entire coast and claim possession of it was Francis Drake in
1579. Beginning in the late 1700s, Spanish missionaries set up
tiny settlements on enormous grants of land in the vast territory
north of Baja California. The missions played a dominant role in
the decimation of California's indigenous population. Upon Mexican
independence from Spain, the chain of missions became the property
of the Mexican government, and they were quickly dissolved and
abandoned.
In 1846, at the outset of the Mexican-American War, the California
Republic was founded and the Bear Flag was flown, which featured a
golden bear and a star. The Republic came to a sudden end,
however, when Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy
sailed into San Francisco Bay and claimed California for the
United States. Following the war, the region was divided between
Mexico and the United States.
In 1848, the Spanish-speaking population of distant upper
California numbered around 4,000. But after gold was discovered,
the population burgeoned with Americans and a few Europeans in the
great California gold rush. In 1850, the state was admitted to the
Union of the USA.
At first, travel between the far Pacific West to the eastern
population centers was time-consuming and dangerous, requiring
either long ocean voyages, or difficult transcontinental passages.
A more direct connection came in 1869 with the completion of the
first transcontinental railroad. After this rail link was
established, hundreds of thousands of Americans came west, where
new Californians were discovering that land in the state, if
irrigated during the dry summer months, was extremely well suited
to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. and the foundation was laid for
the state's prodigious agricultural production of today.
During the early 20th century, migration to California accelerated
with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the
Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965 the
population grew from fewer than one million to become the most
populous state in the Union. From 1965 to the present, the
population demographic changed radically and became one of the
most diverse in the world. The state is generally liberal-leaning,
technologically and culturally savvy, and a world center of
engineering businesses, the film and television industry and, agricultural production.
