| 1869 | The Central Pacific meets the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Leland Stanford drives in a golden spike, marking the connection of the lines. Several thousand Chinese laborers have risked their lives to build the line through the Sierra Nevada and across the Great Basin. The University of California officially opens with ten instructors and forty students. Frederick Marriot's dirigible The Avitor flies at San Mateo. Negroes and Chinese are permitted to attend schools with whites. Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flats" appears in the Overland Monthly. Thomas Baker lays out the site of Bakersfield. |
| 1870 | Indian immunity from prosecution for vagrancy is eliminated by the new penal code. Land set aside for San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The state moves to prevent the importation of Chinese criminals for use as coolies. Congress grants San Francisco's Alaska Commercial Company a twenty year monopoly on seal hunting in the Pribilof Islands. The anti-Chinese "Industrial Reformers" organize. William Ralston refuses the honor of having a new Stanislaus County town laid out by the Central Pacific named after him. Railroad officials commemorate his humility by naming the town Modesto instead. |
| 1871 | Chinese Massacre. White Los Angeles citizens go bezerk after the accidental killing of a white man by a Chinese laborer. Nineteen Chinese die in the raid upon their neighborhood. The Southern Pacific receives permission to link with the Texas Pacific Railroad at the Colorado River. San Francisco Art Institute established. California Historical Society established. Invention of the cable car by Arthur Hallidie. |
| 1872 | Owens Valley earthquake. William Ralston falls for the Great Diamond Hoax. Bohemian Club founded by real bohemians. Leland Stanford calls upon photographer Eadweard Muybridge to demonstrate by photos that a trotting horse sometimes has all four feet off the ground. Muybridge rigs a series of cameras and proves Stanford to be right. The work, which continues for six years, becomes the foundation for motion pictures. The U.S. Mining Law of 1872 turns local mining codes into law. The prohibition against complaints made by Indians and Chinese against white men is quietly dropped. The sale of alcohol to Indians is made illegal. The Modoc War begins. The People vs. U.S. Constitution: the state law requiring a $500 bond per foreign passenger aboard sea vessels is declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Public opinion forces the State Legislature to grant gold discoverer James Marshall $200 per month for two years. Next year, however, it will cut the appropriation to $100 per month. Central Pacific Railroad builders lay out a town which they call Fresno Station after the county in which it is situated. Pigeon Point Lighthouse constructed. Roughing It by Mark Twain. Ventura County organized. |
| 1873 | General Canby is killed during peace negotiations with the Modocs John G. Ames investigates the plight of the Mission Indians for the commissioner of Indian Affairs. Parent Navel Orange Tree planted in Riverside by Eliza Tibbetts. Grafts of this seedless orange form the backbone of the California citrus industry. Highwayman Tiburcio Vasquéz and his gang kill three men at Paicines near San Juan Bautista. (August) California Colony of Indiana founded by Dr. Thomas B. Elliot of Indianapolis. The organization eventually buys the San Pasqual Rancho from Dr. John S. Griffin for $25,000. Six Modoc leaders, including Captain Jack, are hung at Fort Klamath. (October) Arthur Hallidie's Clay Street Railroad, the world's first cable car line, begins operation. |
| 1874 | The State Supreme Court rules that if separate schools are not provided for them, then Negroes may attend the same schools as whites. The Legislature provides for separate schools for Negroes and Indians. Tiburcio Vasquéz is captured. (May) A Congressional Investigation into reservation conditions reveals that white Indian Agents have been embezzling much of the aid meant for the Indians. Citizens of Millerton vote to give the Fresno County seat to Fresno Station. Nearly the entire population moves to be near the railroad. Citizens plant vines and grow grapes for raisins. Completion of State Capitol. Methodists establish the first Chautauqua in the West at Pacific Grove. The California Immigrant Union buys Ranchos Lompoc and Misión Vieja. Deeds of sale for the subdivided plots forbid the sale of liquor on the land. William M. Lent travels to Hardin County, Kentucky to sue Phillip Arnold for defrauding Lent, George D. Roberts, and William Ralston in "The Great Diamond Hoax". Friends of Arnold ambush Lent and beat him, forcing the financier to leave town unrecompensed. Oakland Tribune founded. Modoc and San Benito Counties organized. |
| 1875 | Special Commissioner C. A. Wetmore writes that the only right guaranteed to the Mission Indians is "the right to beg" The U.S Congress grants a 100 foot wide right of way through public lands on each side of the main line of a railroad. (March 3) Tiburcio Vasquéz is hanged at San Jose. (March 19) A blizzard traps John Muir and his companions near the summit of Mount Shasta. The party survives by immersing themselves in hot springs. The inhabited part of the Rancho San Pasqual are renamed Pasadena, from the Chippewa for "valley between the hills". Native Sons of the Golden West founded. Ralston's Palace Hotel opens. The Bank of California collapses. President William Ralston is found drowned the next day. Luther Burbank arrives in California. James Flood starts the Nevada Bank. Klamath County, one of the original 27 counties formed in 1850, is merged into Del Norte, Humboldt, and Siskiyou Counties. |
| 1876 | St. Vibiana's is opened as the cathedral for the Diocese of Los Angeles. The Southern Pacific completes the second transcontinental rail connection, this one arriving in Los Angeles. The U.S. Congress investigates Chinese immigration. Madera laid out by the California Lumber Company. |
| 1877 | Murder of Thomas More by members of the Sespe Settlers's League (March 23) led by Baptist minister F. A. Sprague. "Black Bart" begins holding up Wells Fargo stagecoaches. He is noted for his chivalry and the bad poetry he leaves at the scene of his crimes. Dennis Kearney organizes the Workingman's Party of California and demands the expulsion of the Chinese. |
| 1878 | Hastings College of Law founded. Exhumations of bodies for reburial is outlawed. First long distance telephone line strung, between Milton and French Corral mining districts. Canadian Lyman Ryce settles in Petaluma. His chicken ranch will pioneer artificial incubation and brooding. Death of Mark Hopkins. |
| 1879 | State voters are polled on whether they want to continue Chinese immigration. 900 voters vote for allowing it to continue, 150,000 vote against. The plebiscite is suspect because ballots are printed as to make voting for continuing immigration difficult. Robert Louis Stevenson visits California. New Constitutional Convention. Chinese are denied the right to vote. Chronicle editor Charles de Young shoots and seriously wounds mayoral candidate Isaac Kalloch after Kalloch tells an audience that the libelous editor's mother ran a house of ill repute. |
| 1880 | Death of Emperor Norton. (January 7) University of Southern California founded on land donated by a Catholic, a Jew, and a Protestant.. Schools are opened to children of all races. School boards are allowed to bar "children of filthy or degenerate habits or children suffering from contagious or infectious disease". A new treaty with China allows the United States the right to restrict Chinese residency and immigration. Mussel Slough Tragedy. (May 11) Seven die in a dispute brought on by conflicting promises made by the Southern Pacific Railroad. A state law prohibits the importation of Chinese women for immoral purposes. Resident aliens are forbidden to fish in California waters. The law is found to be unconstitutional. Anyone who cannot vote in California is also denied a business license by an act of the Legislature. Corporations are prohibited from hiring Chinese workers. Isaac M. Kalloch, son of the mayor, hunts down Charles de Young in the editor's office. Kalloch is acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Discovery of borax in Death Valley. Construction of Del Monte Hotel, Monterey. John Sutter dies in Washington D.C., his claims against the United States still unresolved. |
| 1881 | Helen Jackson's A Century of Dishonor, championing the cause of the Mission Indians, appears. Horace Bell's Reminiscences of a Ranger. W.E. Willmore subdivides 10,000 of Los Angeles county barley field and sells them for $12.50 to $25 an acre. He names his town "Willmore City". Los Angeles Times founded. Fire wipes out the Sierraville business district. The Los Angeles State Normal School is founded. This will later become UCLA. |
| 1882 | The State Legislature declares a holiday so that citizens may demonstrate their support for Asian exclusion. John Dolbeer's donkey engine enables more efficient logging of the redwood forests. Oscar Wilde visits San Francisco. The Exclusion Act severely limits immigration of Chinese and other foreign "undesireables". Chinese immigration is entirely suspended for ten years. |
| 1883 | Historical Society of Southern California founded. Santa Paula oilfield commences operation. John Joseph Montgomery flies a glider off San Diego's Otay Mesa, becoming the first man to pilot a heavier than air craft. "Black Bart" is discovered to be San Francisco bank clerk Charles Bolton. Bolton, who has been captured after he carelessly dropped a handkerchief with his laundry mark on it, is sent to San Quentin. |
| 1884 | Death of Leland Stanford, Jr. Modesto Bee founded. Adolph Spreckels shoots Chronicle editor Michael de Young after de Young defames the Spreckels family. De Young survives to give the city the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Adolph Spreckels is found insane |
| 1885 | The International Workingman's Party plans a socialist community. Citrus farmers organize the Orange Growers Protective Union of Southern California. The California Southern links with the Santa Fe near San Bernardino after several last minute maneuvers to prevent the crossing of the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The Octopus sees its monopoly on transcontinental rail trade disappear. The Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reaches Los Angeles. A rate war between it and the Southern Pacific commences. Gold discoverer James Marshall dies (August 10). He is penniless. Sacramento's Crocker Art Gallery established. Luther Burbank establishes a new experimental garden in Santa Rosa after he runs out of room at home. Whisky Flat gold rush. |
| 1886 | The Rate War. The Santa Fe and Southern Pacific hack prices as low as they can to gain control of the Los Angeles rail market. At one point, the Santa Fe offers tickets from Kansas City to Los Angeles for one dollar. Thousands of Midwesterners come to California. Congress declares the land claims of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to be forfeit along the uncompleted portion of the line. Thompson vs. Doaksum. The State Supreme Court rules that Indians have to file claims for their lands just as the Californios did. By this time, however, the deadline for making the claims has passed. Oranges shipped from Los Angeles to Eastern destinations for the first time. Publication of Bancroft's History of California begins. Construction of Carson Mansion, Eureka. |
| 1887 | Realtor Horace H. Wilcox starts a new subdivision near Los Angeles, which his wife names "Hollywood". Land sales in San Jose reach $2,000,000 a day. The Wright Irrigation Act allows for the organization of water projects, the first being the Reclamation Service Orland Irrigation Project. Chico State College founded. Pomona College founded. The "last spike" of the Portland-Sacramento rail route is driven in at Ashland, Oregon. (December 17) |
| 1888 | The Scott Act prohibits the reentry of Chinese who have temporarilly left the United States. 20,000 people are affected. Byrne vs. Alas. The State Supreme Court rules that Indians who have retained continuous occupancy of their lands may retain those lands without filing a claim. The Young Ladies Seminary, now in Oakland, becomes Mills College. Occidental College founded. Edward P. Duplex becomes the first black mayor of a California town, Wheatland. Completion of Lick Observatory, California's largest tombstone. Construction of the Hotel Coronado near San Diego. Death of Charles Crocker. |
| 1889 | Willmore City goes bankrupt and renames itself Long Beach. Frank Roeding and son learn the secret of caprification (cross-fertilizatrion of the Smyrna fig by the fig wasp). (June) The discovery inaugarates a competitive home fig industry. Death of Silver King James Flood. Botiller vs. Dominguez. The State Supreme Court reverses the Byrne vs. Alas decision. Rudyard Kipling visits California. Orange County organized |
| 1890 | The first Rose Parade is celebrated in Pasadena. (January 1) Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Grey Otis locks out typographers and busts their union. Establishment of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Death of David S. Terry. David S. Terry is shot and killed by U.S. Marshall David Neagle after Terry strikes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. Field has earned Terry's wrath by ruling that documents giving Terry's wife a share of the estate of the late Senator William Sharon are fraudulent. Terry and his wife, Sarah Althea Hill Terry, are enroute to San Francisco for sentencing in a contempt of court case before Judge Field. |
| 1891 | Members of the International Workingman's Association found a utopian community on the Kaweah River. The Southern Pacific Railroad closes down its shops and division headquarters in Tulare, moving the former to Bakersfield and the latter to Fresno. The legislature attempts to prohibit the immigration and reentry of Chinese from other states. The State Supreme Court quickly declares this law unconstitutional. Leland Stanford Jr, University founded. The Throop Institute is founded. It will later be known as the California Institute of Technology. Whittier College founded. Glenn County organized. |
| 1892 | The Southern California oil boom begins. E.L. Doheny and C.A. Canfield strike oil in the front yard of a Los Angeles home. The Geary Act. The U.S. Congress continues the suspension of all Chinese immigration for another ten years, prohibits the granting of bail for Chinese citizens, and requires all Chinese to carry certificates of residence. Sierra Club founded. John Muir becomes president for life. First commercial packing of asparagus. "Big Game" between Stanford and Cal Berkeley played for the first time. Troops stationed at the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation are removed. Restoration of Mission San Luis Rey begun. Scripps Institution of Oceanography founded. |
| 1893 | The Chinese Problem. The Geary Act is held constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Secretary of State figures that there are 95,000 Chinese who have failed to register as aliens and are therefore subject to deportation. When Congress discovers that the cost of locating and deporting these scofflaws will amount to more than $10 million, it repeals the requirement to deport violators of the Geary Act. Steven M. White becomes the first native Californian elected to the U.S. Senate. The state moves to prohibit the Chinese slave trade by making it a misdemeanor to bring in Chinese women against their will. Fish and game regulations prevent the use of gill nets and other netting techniques favored by Chinese fisherman. The banks and braes of Scotland come to California with the establishment of the Burlingame Country Club, the state's first. The Battle of Stone Corral, Fresno County, California. Law enforcement officers corner Evans and the Sontags. A deputy sheriif and John Sontag are killed. Chris Evans is crippled for life. Death of Leland Stanford. Kings, Madera, and Riverside Counties organized. |
| 1894 | The People vs. Bray. An appeals court upholds the constitutionality of laws forbidding the sale of alcohol to Indians. Members of the San Francisco contingent of Coxey's Army are harassed by Oakland police. Fresno County growers produce 103,000,000 pounds of raisins, flooding the market and causing the price per pound to fall to two cents. Midwinter Exposition in San Francisco. Timothy Hopkins sells his land (the site of Palo Alto) with the provision that if liquor is ever sold on it, the land will revert back to the original owner. John Muir's The Mountains of California. First Cliff House destroyed by fire. Adolph Sutro begins construction of Second Cliff House. |
| 1896 | Phoebe Apperson Hearst finances an international competition to design a comprehensive building plan for the University of California, Berkeley. Emile Bernard wins. William Randolph Hearst sends Ambrose Bierce to Washington to correspond against the machinations of Colis P. Huntington. Offshore drilling commenced at Summerland, Santa Barbara County. Copper mining begins in Shasta County. Sutro Baths open. The International Workingman's Party colony on the Kaweah River takes the name Kaweah Co-Operative Commonwealth Colony. |
| 1897 | Dr. John Roberts begins making his rounds of the Big Sur coast. He will later campaign for the construction of the Carmel-San Simeon Highway. Formation of Land Settlers League scheme. |
| 1898 | The Raisin Growers Association is founded in Fresno. Sunset begins publication. Griffth J. Griffith donates the land which will become Los Angeles' Griffith Park. Engineers create Oakland's saltwater Lake Merritt from a tidal basin. Oil discovered at Elk Hills. Ng Poon Chew founds the first American Chinese weekly in Los Angeles. |
| 1899 | The Southern Pacific merges with the Central Pacific. Death of Stephen J. Field. George Roeding introduces the fig wasp to aid production of Smyrna figs. Hills Brothers introduces vacuum packing of foodstuffs. It will start with butter and then, next year, use the process for coffee. California fruit canners' association founded. McTeague by Frank Norris |
| 1900 | Oil discovered along the Kern River. Fresno adopts its first city charter. Work on first Imperial Valley irrigation project begins. Ng Poon Chew ("the Chinese Mark Twain") founds the first American Chinese daily in San Francisco. Death of Colis Huntington. |
| 1901 | The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Bottiler vs. Dominguez decision. A provision to prohibit Chinese female slavery is added to the state's Criminal Code. This law is declared unconstitutional. Provisions against Chinese obtaining business licenses or corporate hiring of Chinese are repealed. Construction of Angel's Flight funicular railroad in Los Angeles. San Francisco Mayor James Phelan angers both capital and labor when he refuses to call on outside help and uses city police to put down a waterfront strike. Pacific Electric Railway Company incorporated. Ferry collision off Alcatraz. No one is killed. Frank Norris's The Octopus. |
| 1902 | Indians and Chinese/Mongolian children are again barred from attending classes with whites. The U.S. Congress extends the ban on Chinese immigration indefinately. Secundo Guasti sets out grapevines near the Southern California community bearing his name. |
| 1903 | The Golden Poppy is named the State Flower. Los Angeles adopts initiative, referendum and recall. Completion of San Francisco's Ferry Building. Jack London's The Call of the Wild. The Big Break. Thirteen prisoners escape from Folsom after overpowering the warden and the guard captain. Six of the escapees are recaptured. Three receive life sentences and three are executed. "Red Shirt" Gordon, the leader of the escape, is never recaptured. John Muir meets with Theodore Roosevelt at Yosemite. The conservationist impresses the president who moves to protect 148 million acres of National Forest, five national parks and 23 national monuments during his term. Establishment of Key Route System on San Francisco Bay. First canning of tuna. Mary Austin's Land of Little Rain. |
| 1904 | Mary Austin, George Sterling, James Hopper and others establish an artists' colony in the Carmel Valley. Bulletin publisher R.A. Crothers is mugged by an unknown assailant. A Bulletin editorial charges "Boss" Abe Ruef and the administration of Mayor Eugene Schmitz with engineering the attack to intimidate the Bulletin out of printing stories about Ruef and Schmitz's graft. Venice, California founded. Italian Bank of California founded. Congress prohibits naturalization of Chinese citizens. |
| 1905 | UC Davis established. The text of the 1851-52 Indian treaties are made public. (January 18) The State again moves to prohibit Chinese female slavery. The Salton Sea. Reclamation engineers open a breach in the Colorado River Wall just south of the Mexican border to fill Imperial Valley canals rendered useless by an accumulation of silt. A flood catches the engineers by surprise and for two years, Colorado River water continues to fill the lowest portions of the Imperial Valley, creating the Salton Sea. California cedes the Yosemite Valley to the Federal Government for inclusion in the National Park. Bancroft Library sold to University of California for $250,000. Bancroft donates $100,000 towards the purchase. California Fruit Grower's Exchange founded. The San Francisco Chronicle launches a series which accuses Japanese immigrants of debauching white women, deliberately undermining the school system, and causing crime and poverty in California. The series inspires the founding of The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League with 80,000 members. Pacific Gas and Electric founded. |
| 1906 | The San Francisco earthquake and fire. First fossils discovered in the La Brea tarpits. First motion picture studio in Los Angeles. First Los Angeles to Honolulu transpacific yacht race. |