President Fillmore signed the bill that gave California its statehood on September 9, 1850. The state government did not bring the law and order to California as many had hoped. Many law officers were unwilling or unable to enforce the laws, so in San Francisco, a group of citizens formed a vigilance committee so they could enforce the laws themselves. The first of these vigilance committees lasted less than a month, and in that month, four were hanged, fifteen were handed over to the police for trials, and twenty-nine more were whipped or deported. When the city's marshals and one of its newspaper editors were shot down in 1856, the second vigilance committee was formed, and they seized weapons from the local state militia.
Gold was mined from three major regions:
At first, mining gold was done by a process called "panning." This is done by swirling water from a stream in a shallow pan until the heavier, gold-bearing materials fell to the bottom while the water and lighter sand fell out over the rim of the pan. Soon, machines were made so that more materials could be processed at a time. The wooden "rocker" could process pails of materials at a time. Investment in this new equipment worked best with a team of men, so many individual miners teamed up in companies. Gold in and around the streams was soon exhausted, and the miners began to dig into the hard rock using pick-axes to dig shafts with horizontal tunnels branching off so that they could discover subterranean veins of gold-bearing quartz. Hillsides with dried up river bed also had gold-bearing materials in them, and the gold was mined through a process called hydraulic mining. Streams and rivers were channeled to the hills to provide water for high-pressure to wash down the gravel from a hillside.
Johann Sutter's property was overrun by gold miners and businessmen. The town he dreamed of as "Sutterville" was instead a town that became the city of Sacramento. It served as the trading center for the Northern Mines and even became the state's capital. Sacramento's significance in the state's economy was reflected when it was chosen as a terminus for Pony Express riders and the depot of the state's first railroad.
Even with several rapidly growing cities, California was not linked by a railroad to the eastern United States. Without a railroad, importing and exporting goods was extremely difficult. In 1863, construction on the Central Pacific line began. The line was to run from San Francisco and link to its sister railroad that connected to the East, the Union Pacific.
The new railroads allowed more agricultural developement to occur, giving citrus orchards and other large agricultural areas easy access to railroad lines, and agriculture became an important part of California's economy. When the Mexican governor learned of America's takeover, he gave out over 800 land grants of the best farmland with fraudulent dates so that they would appear to precede the American takeover. Challenging the validity of the grants could take years in court, and most of the small farmers could not afford to purchase the land from the owners, so many had to be squatters or abandon their dreams. Since most farms were on such large tracts of land, most of the farms were commercial.
Los Angeles, at the time, was just a small village in Southern California, but political leaders and businessmen were determined to have the railroad lines that were going to be built in the southern part of the state run through the town. The Southern Pacific railroad was the first to link Los Angeles to the transcontinental railroad, and the population began to boom, and even more so when it was also connected to the Santa Fe railroad in 1885. Los Angeles's population quadrupled in the 1880s, and by 1900 had doubled again to a population of over 100,000. Many people traveled form the East to settle in the towns of California, and railroad companies were selling off the extra land they had received in the grants they were given by the government.
The unique nature of California's wildlife, topography, and botany made California an appealing place for nearly all Americans. By the 1890s, gold and other precious minerals were not a major factor in the growth of the state. California was developing a rich and diverse economy that did not rely on the mining of precious minerals.
The Gold Rush also brought new types of people to California. White Americans were migrating and becoming the largest group in California. Native Americans who were previously isolated from the settlers were exposed to new diseases by the miners, and their numbers began to decrease. Much of the Hispanic population left during the first few years of the gold rush, and their numbers continued to decrease to about four percent of the population in 1870. Hispanics lost influence with the coming of the railroads, and their opiions did not seem to matter to the Americans who were now in power. Many of the Hispanics lost their money in the court cases determing the validity of their grants that had been given to them. Keeping the cases alive in court for up to twenty years had devastating on their families.
California and the Pacific Coast were becoming a bigger part of life in the United States. California helped establish trade between China and Japan. Many of the immigrants to California were Asian, and they established "Chinatowns" in California, and eventually in other parts of the U.S.
An earthquake struck the city of San Francisco on April 18, 1906. The ordeal lasted for two minutes and the fires that resulted from the quake lasted for three days. Five hundred San Franciscans were left dead and more than 28,000 buildings – more than a third of the homes, offices, and stores in the entire city – were destroyed. Although the greatest damage was in San Francisco, the effects of the quake were felt throughout California. With the knowledge learned from the earthquake, San Francisco was rebuilt, and new buildings were made stronger to better resist the forces of future quakes. Even with the beauty and plentiful resources of the area, Californians had to realize that the area was not immune to the disasters brought on by nature.
Today, California is still a land of beauty, and millions of tourists are attracted to this area every year. California is an influence on the rest of the United States as well as the rest of the world.