- California was formerly a possession of the Spanish Empire, and then a part of Mexico following Mexican independence from Spain in 1821. Although there were American citizens migrating into the northern part of California through the early-to-mid 19th century, the population of the region remained small. Prior to 1846, there were fewer than 10,000 people living in California, with fewer than 1,500 of them being Americans.
The United States declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846. It took roughly two months for word that the U.S. and Mexico were at war to even reach isolated, distant California. However, in June 1846 a small uprising of Americans seized a Mexican garrison in Sonoma, raising the Bear Flag, which continues to be the standard of California to this day. Elements of the U.S. Army, led by Captain John C. Fremont, took over several days later. From that point forward, the conquest of Mexico was a U.S. military affair, with Army and Navy forces seizing different parts of the state from Mexican rule. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the Mexican War and formally ceded control of California (among other territories) to American sovereignty. - The most obvious feature of California circa 1850 was the ongoing Gold Rush. Gold was discovered near Sacramento in 1848, attracting hundreds of thousands of prospectors from around the world to California for the next several years. While the easily accessed gold deposits would all be exhausted by the end of 1850, gold-hungry migrants would keep on coming, looking for gold all across California (sometimes successfully).
1850 was also the year that California achieved statehood, recognized by the U.S. Congress on September 9. The delegates of at the state convention unanimously voted to make California a free state, outlawing slavery. Prior to this, the territory was under U.S. military administration. The state capital in 1850 was not Sacramento, but San Jose. It moved several times in the 1850s before settling in Sacramento.
With California's legal status only becoming defined in 1850, the area was virtually lawless. Order only truly prevailed wherever U.S. troops were located. The land was vast, and even with the Gold Rush-driven population boom, sparsely populated (by 1855, the population of California was just over 350,000--modern California boasts 36.5 million people). Law enforcement was irregular, often absent, and people operated under a combination of American principles, Mexican customs and personal necessity. Vigilantism was rampant. - The California of 1850 was very much the creation of the Gold Rush forces that were still coursing through the state. The dramatic and sudden surge of immigration was a disaster for Native American populations, who were massacred and driven off their lands by gold-hungry miners and farmers.
All of these hundreds of thousands of new faces had to be fed, clothed and housed, and the vastly increased demand resulted the development of California's infrastructure to meet it. Goods flowed into San Francisco; agriculture, which had previously been dominated by a few cattle farms, expanded greatly and turned to the production of food staples (although much of the state's food needs still had to be met by imports); professionals and skilled artisans relocated to pursue their professions. The migration also brought the first substantial wave of immigration from China to American shores. Several hundred Chinese were already in the region by 1850. - Although many of these gold prospecting and mining migrants would eventually return home, they made an indelible mark on California, greatly spurring the development of what had previously been a distant and isolated backwater.
- San Francisco, previously little more than a village of roughly 1,000 people, had exploded to a population of 25,000. This was due in large part to the Gold Rush and San Francisco's advantageous position as a good harbor and port in Northern California. Even in 1850, the transformation would have been obvious, with more than 100,000 people having been added to the population in the space of just two years.
Los Angeles was not even declared as a city until April 1850. It was a small town, being relatively disconnected from the forces that were driving California's growth. Even twenty years later, the population was barely more than 5,000.
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