105 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
105 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
California State University Monterey Bay
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SBS 385 *Environmental History of California*
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**California: A History* (Starr 2005)**
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**Chapter 6: The Higher Provincialism: American Life in an Emergent
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Region**
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In 1908, Josiah Royce (born in Grass Valley, CA), the Harvard
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philosopher extolled regional life as something profoundly serving the
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human need for community. Americans needed such a personalized
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connection more then ever, now that the **United States was becoming an
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international empire**. Americans could discover what it meant to be an
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American when they discovered their American identity in a localized
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context. Royce’s favorite province for analysis was California,
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specifically its topography and climate. **California promoted
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simultaneously an independence of mind, individualism, and open
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simplicity of manner**. California was a prism through which the larger
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American identity, for better or worse, could be glimpsed. For instance,
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Gold Rush communities were largely male, by turns good-humored or
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violent.
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Samuel Clemens, working in San Francisco as a newspaper reporter, would
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reinvent himself as Mark Twain – canny, observant as to social types and
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distinctions, writing a mixed insider/outsider point of view. The
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success of his books (*The Celebrated Jumping From of Calaveras County
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and Other Sketches* in 1876 and *Roughing It* in 1872) turned him into a
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national figure.
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Clarence King’s Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872) represents a
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high point in the frontier genre of geological description and the
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mountaineering memoir. The writings of King and other geologists of the
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California Geological Survey established a record of accurate and
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well-written scientific fact, focusing on the history of the Sierra
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Nevada and its creation through catastrophe and its storage of geologic
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time, evoking the seas, convulsions, lava, and glaciers that created the
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Sierra in eons past.
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William Randolph Hearst, scion of mining millionaire George Hearst, a
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U.S. senator, was editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. He
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pioneered journalistic techniques – featured writers, columns, crusading
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editorials backed by vivid cartoons, coverage of society, the sporting
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world – that he would soon take national.
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California supported art from the frontier days onward, and by the 1870s
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had firmly established itself as a center for landscape painting. There
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was plenty to paint in California, with an emphasis on such signature
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places as Mount Shasta, Mount Tamalpais, the Yosemite Valley, Clear
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Lake, the Napa Valley, and the oak-dotted hills of the East Bay.
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Likewise did photography flourish and early experiments in high
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technology would bring into being Silicon Valley and the world it
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revolutionized.
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In the 1870s, adobe gave way to brick and wood; candles and kerosene
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were replaced by gaslight; streets were paved and tracks laid for
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horsedrawn streetcars; police and fire departments were organized; a
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lending library was established; a city hall, county hospital, opera
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house, and theater opened, as **Los Angeles made the transition** from
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Mexican to American city.
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The opening of the transcontinental railroad route into **Southern
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California** precipitated the brief but transforming “Boom of the
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Eighties” that finalized the Americanization of Southern California.
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**Middle and upper middle class migration for reasons of health,
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tourism, winter sojourn, or permanent residence**. The perception of
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Southern California as Spanish Colonial daydream helped establish an
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expanded metaphor of Mediterraneanism in terms of climate and terrain
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and many **parallels to Mediterranean Europe** with comparisons to
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Spain, Italy, and Greece. Such an interplay of metaphors helped Southern
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California develop their built environment in a manner akin to a stage
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set.
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As the 20^th^ century dawned, the **population** of California stood at
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**1.5 million**, quite a small figure for such a vast state. Nearly half
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this population lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, compared with
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18,000 people living in San Diego. The railroad constituted the
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predominant public works infrastructure of California in the 19^th^
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century. The **railroad linked the state, shipped the freight, owned and
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developed the land, founded the cities of the interior, and controlled
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the political machines of San Francisco and Los Angeles**. The railroad
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was the primary fact and symbol of **industrialism**, hence the
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commanding icon of **modern** **life**.
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Already, sentiment was building for a better governance of this emergent
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society. California continued to require a makeover of its public
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culture, and reforming its architecture, town planning, business
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culture, and politics. The decade of the 1880s was of a **generation of
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pre-Progressive and Progressive reformers** who set about the business
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of trying to make California worthy of its geographical grandeur.
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University students were encouraged to practice high thinking and the
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strenuous life, to pursue high-minded, evolution-friendly theism whose
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matrix and primary symbol was California as natural place. The Golden
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Gate Kindergarten Association incorporated in 1884 in San Francisco
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became the model for free public kindergartens in the U.S. and abroad.
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At 5:12am on Wednesday April 18, 1906 the Pacific and North American
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tectonic plates suddenly sprang from nine to twenty-one feet past each
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other along the 290 miles of the San Andreas fault. The **Great
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Earthquake and Fire had ended the second phase of California’s
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development**, its High Provincial years of regional achievement and
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contentment. Ahead lay the challenge and task for the **next era**: the
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creation of an **infrastructure** that would make possible a
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**mega-state**.
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