California historical timeline

History

California's history is a sequence of rushes -- for souls, gold, land, water, film, oil, aircraft, chips -- each of which remade the place and none of which finished it. What a visitor sees -- the mission chain, the Gold Country towns, the Sacramento capitol, the wooden Victorians and the rebuilt city of San Francisco, the studios, the freeways, the campuses of the Santa Clara Valley -- is the record.

Chronology

c. 14,500 BC People cross from Asia into the Americas; by European contact California is among the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of the continent, with the Chumash, Kumeyaay, Nisenan, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Ohlone, Pomo, Serrano, Shasta, Tataviam, Tongva, Wintu, Yurok and Yokuts among its peoples.
1542 Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo's Spanish expedition enters San Diego Bay on 28 September; Francis Drake claims a stretch of coast for the English crown in 1579; nothing follows for two centuries.
1769 The Portolá expedition and Junípero Serra found the first mission and presidio at San Diego; 21 Franciscan missions rise along El Camino Real by 1833, with at least 87,787 baptisms and 63,789 deaths recorded among the native people gathered into them. Los Angeles is founded in 1781, the Presidio of San Francisco in 1776.
1821 Mexico's independence makes California Mexican; the missions are secularised from 1833 and their lands become ranchos; in 1846 American settlers raise the Bear Flag at Sonoma, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo cedes the province to the United States in 1848.
1848 On 24 January James Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, nine days before the treaty; some 300,000 people arrive from around the world, San Francisco grows from 200 people to 36,000, gold worth tens of billions of today's dollars is taken, the native population collapses through disease, starvation and violence -- the California genocide -- and California is admitted as the 31st state, a free state, on 9 September 1850.
1869 The transcontinental railroad cuts the journey from Chicago to six days; the state is still largely rural with 1.4 million people at the century's end. On 18 April 1906 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake and fire kill more than 3,000 in San Francisco and destroy 80 per cent of the city, the deadliest earthquake in American history.
1910 Hollywood is consolidated into Los Angeles and the film industry follows within two years; the Los Angeles Aqueduct opens in 1913, and the 1930s bring the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover-era dams and the Dust Bowl migrants; Yosemite, protected since Lincoln's grant of 1864 and a national park since 1890, is followed by nine more parks and seashores.
1955 Disneyland opens in Anaheim on 17 July; Squaw Valley hosts the 1960 Winter Olympics; the hippie movement begins in San Francisco; the population, under a million in 1900, becomes the nation's largest by 1965; the Santa Clara Valley's integrated circuit, microprocessor and microcomputer earn it the name Silicon Valley.
2011 The worst drought on record runs to 2017; the 2018 fire season is the deadliest and most destructive, 2020 burns 4.4 million acres, and three-quarters of the state's most destructive fires date from 2015 on; Los Angeles prepares to host its third Olympics in 2028 and the state's economy passes $4 trillion.

What survived, and how

The native nations survived the missions and the gold rush by holding on in the margins and by law: their names are on the land and their governments on the map. The missions survived as churches and ruins because the Mission Revival made them fashionable. San Francisco survived 1906 by rebuilding in nine years for a world's fair. The redwoods survived where the logging companies were beaten to them, 45 per cent of the old growth in four parks. What did not survive was the grizzly on the flag: the state's animal is extinct in the state.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

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Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — It borders Oregon to the north, and Nevada and Arizona to the east; it also shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California to the…, The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo…, Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag…, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, just weeks prior to the formal transfer of California to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This…, In 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau reported California's population as 6% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 90% non-Hispanic white. To meet the population's needs,…, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in California behind English, spoken by 28.18% (10,434,308) of the state's population in 2021, The largest religious denominations by number of adherents as a percentage of California's population in 2014 were the Catholic Church with 28%, Evangelical…, In the 21st century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in…, California is the most visited state in the country. Disneyland in Anaheim is a major tourist destination, with 16.9 million annual visits in 2022, Yosemite National Park was established in 1890, followed by nine other national parks and seashores, as well as various other protected areas across…, The most commonly accepted model of migration to the New World is that people from Asia crossed the Bering land bridge to the Americas about 14,500 BC, At the time of the first European contact, Native American tribes in California included the Chumash, Kumeyaay, Nisenan, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave,…, California was part of New Spain until that kingdom dissolved in 1821, becoming part of Mexico. During the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), California was…, Following Mexican independence, the missions were secularized via the passing of the Mexican Secularization Act of 1833 and the former mission lands were…, The decisive event was the opening of the transcontinental railroad in 1869; six days by train brought a traveler from Chicago to San Francisco, compared to…, The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush in California, which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's…, San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852, The Spanish missions in California formed a series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 ... The missions were established…, The first Alta California mission and presidio were founded at San Diego, the second at Monterey., A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 05:12 am Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906 ... More than 3,000 people…, The city was founded on September 4, 1781, under Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, on the village of Yaanga, The city was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984, and will host the games for a third time in 2028, Metro recorded approximately 951,500 weekday boardings in 2024, with buses accounting for more than two-thirds of ridership, San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the fourth-most populous city in California and the 17th-most populous in the United…, On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles…, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the…, In 1839 ... John Augustus Sutter, who subsequently established Sutter's Fort, the city becoming the permanent state capital in 1854 and ushering in the construction of a new state capitol building which was finished in 1874, A prominent water tower bore the slogan 'City of Trees' until 2017 when it was repainted with the words 'America's Farm-to-Fork Capital', Congress created Redwood National Park in 1968 and expanded it in 1978. In 1994, the National Park Service (NPS) and the California Department of Parks and…, The bridge opened to the public on May 27, 1937, Its name has become synonymous with the American film industry ... Many notable film studios such as Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros.,…, Nestor Studios, Hollywood's first movie studio, 1912, It was originally erected in 1923 as a temporary advertisement for a local real estate development, and spelled out 'HOLLYWOODLAND' in 50 ft white uppercase…, The first stars were unveiled in 1958, and the first permanent stars were placed in 1960., It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, opening…, the resort's second theme park Disney California Adventure opened in 2001 on the site of Disneyland's original parking lot. Disneyland has had a larger…, California's Silicon Valley is home to some of the world's most valuable technology companies, including Apple, Alphabet, and Nvidia. As of June 2025, 58 of…, California wine production has a rich viticulture history since the late 1700s when Spanish Jesuit missionaries planted Vitis vinifera vines ... In the…, The state produces about ninety percent of the American wine supply and is the fourth largest wine producer among the world's independent nations.…, The first commercial winery in California, Buena Vista Winery, was founded in 1857 by Agoston Haraszthy and is located in Sonoma, California, Napa County rose to the first rank of wine regions, along with France, when local wineries Stag's Leap Wine Cellars and Chateau Montelena won the 'Judgment…, The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a New World vulture and the largest North American land bird. It became extinct in the wild in 1987 when…, Condor numbers dramatically declined in the 20th century due to agricultural chemicals (DDT), poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction. A…, Created in 1932, the park takes its name from 18th century Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and borrego, a Spanish word for sheep ... it is the…, Monterey was founded by the Spanish in 1774, when Gaspar de Portolá and Junípero Serra established the Presidio of Monterey, Monterey continued to serve as the capital of the American interim government of California until 1849, during which it hosted California's 1st…, Mission Santa Barbara, known as 'the Queen of the Missions', was founded by the Spanish in 1786., because Palm Springs is a retirement location and a winter snowbird destination, the city's population triples between November and March. The majority of…, About 75% of California's 20 most destructive wildfires—measured in terms of structures burned—have occurred since 2015. (September 2026).