On September 9, 1850, California was admitted to the union as the 31st state. Within 5 years, and almost constantly since, there have been proposals, many serious and many not, to divide California into two, three, and even six separate states. Some of these propositions have come very close to fruition with the state assembly passing then on a number of occasions before being otherwise defeated. There is a good chance, had the country not been distracted by the oncoming Civil War, that California would have been divvied up even before it celebrated its 10th birthday.
The idea that California is simply too big to be a single state is not without merit, both at its creation and today. Before there were roads and regular communication systems in place, California was essentially bisected by the Tehachapi mountains, which prevented easy travel between the southern and northern areas of the state. Geographically. culturally, and economically, there has always been a vast difference between flat and dry Southern California and the mountainous and wooded Northern California, not to mention the stark contrasts between the coastal cities and the interior farm corridor. Today, California is America’s most populous state as well as its most economically productive. If California’s GDP were ranked among the nations of the world, it would stand 7th. And anyone who has seen a California tourism commercial knows that the state has a little bit of everything: big cities, small towns, deserts, mountains, agriculture, vast coastline, and more. It’s not hard to see why many think California would be better off with more a locally focused government and representation.
A question worth asking: if almost immediately after its creation there were calls for its dissolution, how were the borders of California even decided? The answer involves three major U.S. treaties, Florida, and a whole lot of gold.
It starts in 1819 with the Adams-Onís Treaty, which solidified the United States purchase of the Florida territory from Spain. While the young John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, and Spanish Foreign Minister Luis de Onís were negotiating the Florida question, they also settled the much larger border question between the United States and New Spain, which would later become Mexico. Adams, keen on ensuring American access to the Pacific, pressed to define this border as far west as the coast. Because it was poorly mapped, the men agreed on a northern border for New Spain at the 42nd parallel: a straight line east from the coast and then following the Arkansas and Red Rivers until reaching the western boundary of Louisiana. Above this border on the west coast sat the Oregon country, land owned by no country, but on which America and Britain had agreed to shared access. The second important agreement in determining California’s borders was the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which essentially agreed that the Oregon country, which includes modern day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, would belong to the United States, with everything above the 49th parallel belonging to Britain. Within two years the Americans had made this space between the 49th parallel (which would become the Canadian border) and the 42nd parallel the Oregon Territory, a federally recognized territory on the path to statehood.
One of the reasons the United States was so intent on sealing this northern border and avoiding conflict with the British over Oregon was that they had just entered into conflict in the south. In 1845, President John Tyler annexed Texas and Congress admitted it to the union as the 28th state. The problem here was that while the people of Texas wanted annexation by the United States, Mexico believed, given the earlier Adams-Onís Treaty, that the land belonged to them. The two nations went to war in May of 1846, and to make a longer story more concise, by September of 1847 General Winfield Scott had captured Mexico City and the war was over. The resulting negotiations produced the Treaty of Gaudelupe-Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded all lands north of the Rio Grande. At the coast, it was agreed that Mexcio’s norther border would lie one nautical league below the southernmost point in the port of San Diego, and then extend in a straight line east to the Colorado river. This is where the border still lies today.
While this treaty was being negotiated and just a few weeks before its ratification, a lucky prospector discovered Gold near Sacramento. While this probably induced one of the heaviest cases of sellers’ remorse in human history, it also caused the 1848 gold rush and ballooned the population of America’s newest land holding. The United States, very much interested in solidifying their grasp on this hot new area, encouraged Californians to draft a constitution and apply for statehood. And so at their constitutional convention, Californians found themselves faced with the question of where to lay their borders. The north was easily defined by terminus of the Oregon Territory at the 42nd parallel. They made absolutely sure to include the entirety of the Sierra Nevada mountain range with its seemingly endless gold deposits by extending their eastern border well on the other side of the range, creating the diagonally-straight line between California and Nevada. With the Sierra Nevadas coming so far south, it was logical, at least looking at the map, to include the rest of the territory down to the border with Mexico at San Diego. The convention submitted this to Congress, and without much complication, it was approved and California joined the union.
Practically speaking at any point since its creation, the layout of California doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. At its creation, however, with gold on the mind and without considering the long term aspects of facilitating a state government, it made plenty of sense. It was a big state, but recently admitted Texas was even bigger. The primary task was sealing the state’s economic fate by ensuring access to the inherent wealth in having gold in your soil. Had that lucky prospector stayed home that day and not discovered the actual Mother Lode, our nation's map could look very different.
