California on the Eve
The Gold Rush dramatically affected California's environment, but much had been changed well before 1848. Primeval California was a unique and extraordinarily diverse natural environment, with a remarkable range of geography and geology, of plants and animals, of weather and natural resources. California had been inhabited or visited by many different people before gold was discovered. Each new group of people brought its own system of values.
They related differently to the beauty of California and its immense bounty of natural resources. Each saw a different kind of "gold" to be reaped from the land. They also related differently to each other. California Indians had been here for more than ten thousand years.
They encountered successive waves of explorers, would-be colonizers, and immigrants, including Spanish missionaries, Mexican and Californio rancheros, Russian hunters, and American trappers, traders and farmers. Who was a Californian? And what did California mean to them?
Top: Portrait of General John A. Sutter, 1856, Collection
of Oakland Museum of California
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