Page 19 - 2024-2025 Travel Guide to California

NATURE’S
EXTREMES
THE HIGHEST POINT in the
continental United States, 14,505-foot
Mount Whitney, and the lowest point, 282
feet below sea level in Death Valley, are
about 100 miles apart in Southern
California.
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 STARK BUT BEAUTIFUL
landscape of Death Valley, top;
a souvenir from the Panama
Pacific International
Exposition of 1915, above;
Mission San Carlos Borromeo
de Carmelo, also known as the
Carmel Mission, right; the
Gaslamp Quarter in San
Diego, below; Point Reyes
lighthouse, opposite.
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
2024-25 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA 17