On this day in 1848 gold was first discovered at Captain John A. Sutter’s and James W. Marshall’s sawmill on the American Fork River, California. This one find sparked Gold Rush unprecedented in U.S. history, in which vast numbers of American gold seekers migrated to the West and changed the face of the nation.
Because of the Gold Rush and the territory’s swelling population in the late 1840’s, California was granted statehood in 1850, before any of those territories surrounding it. (Arizona wasn’t granted statehood until 1912.) Just one year after statehood, the second biggest state in the nation was already seeking to break in two. Here’s an article from the New York Times dated October 20, 1851:
A Convention is to be held at Santa Barbara on the 3d Monday of October, of persons friendly to the proposed division of the State of California. This question is evidently assuming considerable importance. Every mail brings evidence that the project of forming a now slave State from Southern California is increasing in strength. The recent elections at San Diego, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and other places in Southern California turned upon the question, the anti-division candidates being defeated in every instance. All the members of the Legislature elected from that section of the State are pledged to urge a division at the ensuing election.
Today the conflict still goes on. But it’s not about slavery
It’s about Politics:
As far left as the country thinks California is, the North is more so. The North voted for Pat Brown. The South voted for Schwarzeneggar.
It’s about Water:
The North exports it; the South uses it to hose down driveways. (Drinking is for bottle water.)
It’s about Traffic:
The North utilizes extensive public transportation systems to reduce air pollution; the South is a freeway.
It’s about the Conflict Itself:
Every Northerner is constantly aware of the friction between North and South; the average Southerner is unaware any conflict exists. Or that Northern California exists.
Article on California Gold Rush from an eye-witness, 50 years later
