Page 17 - 2023-2024 Travel Guide to California

3000 BC:
WORLD’S
OLDEST
TREES
THE PLANET’S OLDEST LIVING TREES,
bristlecone pines, are found at high elevations in
eastern California’s rugged Inyo National Forest.
Long thought to be the oldest living individual
tree, the aptly named bristlecone pine,
Methuselah, is reckoned to be over 4,850 years old.
Native cultures. Of necessity, the Native Ameri-
cans started over in a bewildering new world.
In 1821, Mexico, with its remote northernmost
province, Alta California, wrenched itself free of
the Spanish Empire. In 1833, the missions were
secularized by the Mexican government and aban-
doned. Their buildings moldered, their pioneering
vineyards and olive groves were eventually over-
grown and forgotten. Not until the 20th century
were the missions restored and revived. Many
flourish today as redoubts of history and contem-
porary worship, handsome, evocative reminders
of the first major European presence.
The Gold Rush
Alta California grew slowly in its isolation. That
changed on January 24, 1848, with the discovery
of gold on the American River. The California
Gold Rush, beginning in earnest in 1849, gave
fortune-seekers a second—some said a last—
chance to make good. Half-a-million newcomers—
many from Europe, Asia, Latin America and
Africa—globalized California in a hurry. The
Mexican descendants of Spanish settlers—the
Californios, with their sprawling ranchos and
lives attuned to the slow turning of the seasons—
were swept aside, left to start over.
Many 49ers stayed on and found another kind
of gold: richly productive new lives in a place
where beginning afresh—personally, financially,
even spiritually—was already a common rite of
passage. In 1850, pried loose by the U.S. victory in
the Mexican War and accelerated by the Gold
Rush, California became the 31st state of the
United States. New Californians brought the new
Golden State into being, plowing its fields,
founding its great universities, building its cities.
California’s lustrous reputation was tarnished
on the morning of April 18, 1906, when a massive
THE DOLORES DEL RIO mural on
Hollywood Boulevard depicts the
movie star from the 1920s and
1930s—she was one of the most
important female figures of the
Golden Age of Mexican cinema,
above; buildings at the ghost town
of Bodie State Park, right; Mount
Whitney, the highest peak in the
continental United States, below;
Alcatraz Penitentiary and Alcatraz
Island in San Francisco, opposite.
2023-24 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA 15