| 1946 | Claremont Men's College established. The Blast-Out. Alcatraz prisoners seize control of the Cell House, prompting Warden Johnston to call in the U.S. Marines. Three convicts and two guards are killed. Congress approves the Indian Claims Commission Act which allows any Indian tribe in the United States to sue the government. (August 13) Richard Nixon begins clawing his way to the top with a dirty campaign that topples New Dealer Jerry Voorhees. Stanford Research Institute founded. |
| 1947 | Hollywood Ten. Howard Hughes briefly flies his Spruce Goose to prove that it was not a waste of money. He will then store the massive aircraft in a Long Beach hangar for nearly forty years. Ronald Reagan, acting as president of the Screen Actors Guild, testifies before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He helps destroy the careers of many suspected "Communists" in the film industry. Birth of Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul Jabbar). |
| 1948 | Extension of All-American Canal to the Coachella Valley. Execution of Miran Thompson and Sam Shockley for their roles in the 1946 Alcatraz Blast-Out. Varian Associates founded. Death of novelist Gertrude Atherton. |
| 1949 | University of California staff and faculty are required to take a loyalty oath. Several staff members refuse. |
| 1950 | Dominican College founded. First Hells Angels chapter founded in San Bernardino. Californium discovered by Glenn Seaborg. Attempts by the State Alcoholic Beverage Commission to close down The Black Cat, a gay bar owned by Sol Stuman, end when the California State Supreme Court rules that bars cannot be discriminated against because they choose to cater to gays or lesbians. |
| 1951 | A nine-county planning commission recommends the creation of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. U.S. Public Law 78 allows farm owners to use Mexican laborers or braceros (Sp. "a pair of arms") if they can find no domestic assistance to harvest crops and if they demonstrate that U.S. wage standards will not be impaired. Richard Nixon defeats Helen Gahagan Douglas (wife of actor Melvin Douglas) for Senate, after a campaign in which he insists that she is "soft on communism". Founding of State Department of Fish and Game. The University of the Pacific moves to Stockton. |
| 1952 | Bakersfield Earthquake. East of Eden by John Steinbeck. The California Fruit Growers' Exchange is renamed Sunkist. |
| 1953 | Thirty one years after the last representative of the species is shot by a hunter, the California Legislature makes the California Grizzly the state animal. It also makes the coast redwood the state tree. |
| 1954 | UC Riverside established. Ronald Reagan becomes the spokesman for General Electric's Death Valley Days television show, a platform which will make him a familiar face in many American households. |
| 1955 | Disneyland opens! Harvey Mudd College established. Completion of the Shasta, Keswick, Folsom, and Friant dam portions of the Central Valley Water Project. Smog Crisis in Los Angeles. The City declares a smog alert, an event which will become more frequent in the sixties and seventies. Haystack Fire, Siskiyou County. (September) |
| 1956 | City of Fremont formed out of five rural communities. Invention of the transistor by William Shockley. |
| 1957 | The obscenity prosecution of Alan Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the publication of Ginsberg's poem Howl ends with the acquittal of both men. On the Road by Jack Keruoac. Richmond Bridge opens. Fairchild Semiconductor founded. |
| 1958 | Two New York baseball teams, the Giants and the Dodgers, move to California. Vandenberg Air Force Base opens. |
| 1959 | UC San Diego established. |
| 1960 | Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. The Chargers play their first season in Los Angeles. They soon move to San Diego. Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series. Candlestick Park opens. Demonstrators disrupt a subcommittee hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee being held in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' chamber at City Hall. Police Captain Phil Kiley orders firemen to turn hoses on the demonstrators and then arrests them after they are washed down the City Hall steps, thus ending Kiley's career. Following this, Fire Chief Murray stipulates that hoses are never to be again used on people. The order remains in effect at the time of this writing. Weferling Fire (July). After many appeals, "Red Light Bandit" Caryl Chessman, who has never committed a murder, is executed. |
| 1961 | UC Santa Cruz established. Santa Monica Mountains Fire. (November) Surfin' by the Beach Boys. Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) established. |
| 1962 | Three convicts slip out of the Alcatraz Cell House and disappear into the waters of San Francisco Bay, never to be seen again. John Steinbeck wins the Nobel Prize. John Paul Scott becomes the only man known to have swum from Alcatraz to the mainland. He washes up on the rocks at Fort Point, five miles away from his intended landing point and perilously close to being swept out to sea. Esalen Institute founded. Voters approve a $792,000,000 bond issue for the construction of BART. Governor Edmund G. Brown defeats Richard Nixon. Following his loss, Nixon tells reporters "You won't have old Nixon to kick around anymore. This is my last press conference, boys." |
| 1963 | Pitzer College founded. The Rumford Act makes discrimination in real estate dealings illegal. |
| 1964 | Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. |