A chance to learn a little bit about each of the states in the nation.
The Great Seal of the state of California has 31 stars on the upper edge representing the number of states upon California's admission to the United states. A grizzly bear and grape cluster represent abundant wildlife and agricultural richness. Below the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a miner works near the Sacramento River - shown busy with commercial traffic. "Eureka" (Greek for "I have found it") probably refers to the discovery of gold. Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, overlooks the scene.
California- "The Golden State"
- California was the 31st state to enter the Union on September 9, 1850
- Constitution was adopted in 1879
- Capital- Sacramento
- State Motto- "Eureka" - I Have Found It!
- State Flower- Golden Poppy
- Gemstone-Benitoite
- State Mineral- Gold
- State Bird- California Valley Quail
- State Tree-Redwood- The redwood is the tallest tree, growing up to 370 feet tall and living for over a thousand years. One redwood in California is 2,200 years old. The roots of this giant conifer are shallow, but spread sideways up to 250 feet from the trunk.
- State Mammal-Grizzly Bear
- State Insect-California Dogface Butterfly
- State Marine Mammal- Gray Whale
- Major Industries- agriculture, oil, mining, electronics, movie making/entertainment and tourism
- Presidential Birthplace- Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda on January 9, 1913 (37th President serving from 1969-1974)
Origin of the Name California
California existed in European literature way before Europeans settled the Western U.S. It wasn't a state filled with vineyards and movie stars, but an island in the West Indies filled with gold and women. The fictional paradise, first mentioned in the early 1500s by Spanish author Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo in his novel Las Sergas de Esplandián, is ruled by Queen Califia and “inhabited by black women, without a single man among them, [living in] the manner of Amazons.” The island is said to be “one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks... everywhere abounds with gold and precious stones” and is home to griffins and other mythical beasts.
While there is some consensus that the area was named for the fictional island, scholars have also suggested that the name comes from the Catalan words calor (“hot”) and forn (“oven”) or from a Native America phrase, kali forno (“high hill”).
The official state flag of California, called the Bear Flag, was first used on June 14, 1846, but was not officially adopted until 1911. It was designed by William Todd. The flag pictures a grizzly bear and a star. The first Californian flag was quickly made by a group of American settlers who had just captured the town of Sonoma (from Mexico) and needed a flag to replace the Mexican banner.
"If Congress followed a policy that all states should be created equal, why did it create California? Answer: It didn't. California created itself. The land that became California came into possession of the United States in 1848 with the end of the Mexican War. Before Congress could go through the process of dividing it into territories, a man named James Marshall spotted something shiny by the sawmill of his employer, John Sutter. It was gold.
"Having been an American possession for barely a year, California was suddenly filled with a population, an economy, and a very high crime rate. So urgent was the need for government that California exacted their own state constitution and declared their own borders, skipping the fuss and bother of territorial status. Territories, after all, can have their borders altered; states (without their consent) cannot. Still, to become a state, Congress had to approve."
"Congress said yes, despite the size of California and its wealth of natural resources. Indeed, if California were a nation today, it would have the fifth largest Gross National Product in the world. Why did Congress do it?"
"Many members of Congress were opposed to the extensive boundaries proposed by California. Nevertheless, many of those concerned by California's size voted in favor of its statehood. An echo of their reasoning reverberates in that modern-day statistic just cited; if it were a nation. Today we look at the map of the contiguous forty-eight states and assume these states to be one nation, indivisible. In 1849, that assumption did not exist. Rather, there was considerable fear that the states might divide into separate nations. This was primarily a concern about the slave states. But bear in mind that our other over sized state, Texas, which had also recently joined the Union, had previously been a nation for nearly ten years."
"The same concern applied to California, as expressed aptly and emotionally on the floor of the Senate by William Seward (who, eighteen years later as Secretary of State, would purchase Alaska for the United States):
"[California] is practically further removed from us than England. We cannot reach her by railroad, nor by unbroken stream navigation. We can send no armies over the prairie, the mountain, and the desert....Let her only seize our domain within her borders, and our commerce in her ports, and she will have at once revenues and credits adequate to all her necessities. Besides, are we so moderate, and has the world become so just, that we have no rivals and no enemies to lend their sympathies and aid to compass the dismemberment of our empire?"
"California violated the policy of equality among states because it could. The United States needed California more than California needed the United States. The size of its boundaries preserves these elements of mid-19th century American life. The location of its boundaries preserves something more. Since they were dictated by California, they were located with the concerns of California in mind, not, as when Congress located borders with the concerns of the region as a whole."
"Why, for instance, did the state's founders include southern California? In those years, it contained far more desert than it does today, with the irrigation that has since been developed. The valuable harbor at San Diego certainly influenced the decision to extend the borders so far south. The importance of access to the ocean is also revealed by California's southeast border, the Colorado River. At the time that California established this boundary, the lower end of the Colorado River was navigable to the Gulf of California. Access to the Colorado River meant access to the seas."
"California's eastern border is the most striking. It is a line that heads due south, then angles southeasterly until it reaches the Colorado River. The official reasoning for this line was that it paralleled, in a general way, the western border of the state at a distance of about 215 miles. True enough, but why 215? The answer is it encloses California's treasure."
"California's eastern border is one of the few items from the Gold Rush that is still on the ground. Its existence is evidence of how important i was to California to possess all of the gold-bearing mountains in the region. Had Congress created the border, it might well have followed the crest of the mountains, as may of the eastern states have borders along the crest of the Appalachians. Indeed, some years after California had been admitted to the Union, Congress broached the idea of locating the California/Nevada border along the crest of the Sierra Nevada. California told Congress to forget it."
"California's northern border is simply a straight line, going east and west along the 42nd parallel. It is a segment of a boundary that was already in place before California existed. Under the Nootka Convention (1790) Spain and England agreed upon the 42nd parallel as the boundary between their Pacific coast claims."
How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein ©2008, pages 23-38"At California's opposite end, is another abrupt end at a straight line, just below San Diego. The land that continues down the peninsula is called Baja, California- Lower California. In negotiating the treaty ending the Mexican War, President James Polk demanded Baja California. But the Mexicans wouldn't budge. In fact, Mexico wouldn't surrender any land south of the Gila River. Mexico insisted on preserving sufficient access for its army to reach Baja California, despite the fact that the land was of little commercial use. The Mexicans feared an American presence on their west, in addition to their north. As a result, California's southern border is a slightly angled line that cuts off Baja California from the rest of the state. If the line went due west from the juncture of the Gila and Colorado rivers, San Diego would be a Mexican city located just below the border. The Americans were willing to relent on Baja California, provided they got the important port at San Diego, along with sufficient land to protect it. As a result, the slightly angled southern border was drawn."
California and World War II
"Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race."Click here to read more of article from the San Francisco Chronicle
"But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing."
"Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries."
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