The National Forests of California Miscellaneous Circular No. 94

SPANISH CALIFORNIA KNEW LITTLE OF THE FORESTS

The Spanish explorers who were attracted to California in the early days were right in their assumption that the region possessed wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. But they missed the one kind of wealth they sought—gold—and they failed to realize the wealth that is in her forests and waters, wealth now being derived from a thriving timber industry and from prosperous irrigated farms and orchards.

The attraction that California has always had is reflected in the name itself, which probably originated with the legend of Montalvo, who wrote of the "romantic wonders and magazines of wealth of the island of California which lies at the right hand of the Indies."

Coronado, in 1535, searched Lower California for the "Seven golden cities of Cibola." Yet for 150 years after the Pilgrims landed on the Atlantic coast California lay untouched by civilized man. It was not unknown to the world of that day, for Cabrillo had sailed along its coast in 1542 in search of a passage to India, and the English admiral Drake had landed and explored a small part of the coast north of the Bay of San Francisco in 1579, and after naming it "New Albion" had sailed away without having seen the bay itself.

Its real history began in 1769, when Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk, landed in San Diego, claimed all of California—which was still believed to be an island—for Charles III of Spain, and began his labor of establishing the missions along the coast. In 1775 Juan de Alaya sailed through the Golden Gate and explored the Bay of San Francisco, first of all white men to do so.

The old Spanish civilization lay near the seacoast, and the Spanish settlers knew little of California's wealth. The Camino Real, or King's Highway, linked their white-walled abode churches from the Mission Dolores in San Francisco to the Mission San Diego de Alcala in San Diego. Between and around these missions the military officers obtained grants from the Spanish crown and founded a feudal aristocracy on ranchos whose area was measured in square leagues and whose boundaries lay on the distant hills. It was a pastoral society of the Old World—easygoing, pleasure loving— iving in a country of magnificent distances, where the mountains came down to the blue waters of the Pacific.

IN THE DAYS OF '49 Washing out gold with a rocker. California's forests have produced far greater wealth than the combined output of her world-famous mines (F—172746)

The great central basins of California, formed by the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, were practically untouched by the Spanish. Nor did the Spanish colonists dream that the wealth of gold which Cortez had once sought lay in the ancient gravels of the foothill streams or was folded into the quartz ledges of the mountains, or that the rivers flowing down from 30,000 square miles of forests on the slopes of the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada would one day produce power for industry and irrigate millions of acres of land. The steady trickle of immigrants, who had been coming over the Sierra since 1827, saw in this country an empire bounded on the north and east by mountains, on the south by a desert, and on the west by the Pacific and realized the value of the spacious harbors and the great valleys. The covetous eyes of the modern world looked upon an Arcadian civilization and envied it its possessions.

War with Mexico was declared by the United States in 1846, and in 1848 the State was surrendered by the Mexican governor. Then followed closely the news of Marshall's discovery of gold, and the trickle of immigrants became a flood. The Argonauts poured into California by land and sea. San Francisco became a seaport. The pastoral era was ended and development began.

MISSION SANTA BARBARA The Spanish civilization of early California days was centered around the white-walled adobe churches of the padres which dotted the Pacific Coast from San Diego to San Francisco (F—199846)

A GROVE OF REDWOODS (SEQUOIA SEMPERVIRENS) Nature in her beneficence has given to California the king of all forest trees, the Sequoia