| 1929 | California Maritime Academy founded. San Mateo Bridge, connecting San Mateo and Hayward, opens. First Oscars awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Organization of Highway Patrol. Invention of the cyclotron, a nuclear particle accelerator, by E.O. Lawrence of Berkeley. The School Code provides for desegregated schools. U.S. Stock Market crash. (November) Malcolm and Allan Lockheed sell their shares in Lockheed Aircraft. |
| 1930 | St. Ignatius College becomes the University of San Francisco. Posthumous publication of Horace Bell's On the Old West Coast. |
| 1931 | High Sierra Wilderness Area established. Carl Wheat and other members of the California Historical Society revive E. Clampus Vitus. Goat Island renamed Yerba Buena Island. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. |
| 1932 | Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. The nation's first municipal opera house is opened in San Francisco. Matilja Canyon Fire. (September) |
| 1933 | Long Beach Earthquake. Townsend Plan. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett is killed in the crash of the dirigible Akron. The newly opened Naval Air Station at Mountain View is named for him. Lynching in Saint James Square, San Jose. The U.S. Department of Justice selects Alcatraz as the site for a new super-security penitentiary. James A. Johnston is appointed warden, effective January 1, 1934. Creation of Death Valley National Monument. Griffth Park Fire. 29 firemen die. |
| 1934 | Bloody Thursday. (July 5) San Francisco General Strike. EPIC. Muckraker and popular novelist Upton Sinclair (The Jungle) launches a Democratic campaign for governor, promising to End Poverty In California. The electorate, nervous about union demonstrations and creeping socialism, choose Republican Frank Merriam instead. The first prison train to Alcatraz arrives from Atlanta, carrying Chicago crime lord Al Capone. East Bay Regional Parks District established. San Diego's Consolidated Aircraft begins manufacturing "flying boats". Leaders of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union are found guilty of violating the Criminal Syndicalism Act. |
| 1935 | First transpacific airmail launched out of San Francisco. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation starts planning of the Central Valley Project. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck. |
| 1936 | San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge completed. Construction of the Cow Palace. First passenger flights between San Francisco and Honolulu. The Varian brothers and William Hansen invent the klystron tube. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck. |
| 1937 | Joseph Strauss's masterpiece, the Golden Gate Bridge, opens to traffic. Arrival of Ronald Reagan in California. Pepperdine University founded. The San Francisco Ballet separates from the San Francisco Opera Company. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. |
| 1938 | Completion of Parker Dam and the creation of Lake Havasu. The Fresno Bee publishes an eyewitness account of the Mussel Slough Tragedy, as remembered by a ninety year old man who was present at the event. (May 12) Ham n' Eggs Initiative. Two advertising men propose a pension plan which would grant California pensioners $30 every Thursday so that they could "eat ham and eggs for breakfast". Hewlett-Packard founded in a Palo Alto garage. |
| 1939 | Arthur "Doc" Barker is killed during an escape attempt from Alcatraz. Golden Gate International Exposition. Governor Olson pardons Tom Mooney. San Francisco Maritime Museum established. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West. |
| 1940 | Pasadena Freeway, the first in the nation, opened to traffic. Kings Canyon National Park created. Disney Studios established. My Name is Aram by William Saroyan. |
| 1941 | Stanford opens Herbert Hoover's monument to himself, the Hoover Tower which houses the Hoover Institution. Orson Welle's Citizen Kane openly ridicules William Randolph Hearst. Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor leads to blackouts on the West Coast. A Japanese submarine, sent to shell San Francisco, is called off at the last minute because the Emperor fears that Japanese Americans might be hurt. Acts of violence against Japanese Americans begin. |
| 1942 | A Japanese submarine shells an oil field near Goleta. Japanese Relocation. The U.S. Marine Corps training station at Camp Pendleton begins operation. Sleepy Lagoon murder. |
| 1943 | All-American Canal completed. Employment in the Southern California aviation industry reaches 243,000, up from 20,000 in 1939! It will employ nearly half a million by the mid-1960s. Congress repeals the Chinese Exclusion Acts, allowing 105 Chinese to enter the U.S. every year. (December 17) |
| 1944 | UC Santa Barbara established. The suit of California Indians under the 1928 Jurisdictional Claims Act receives a $5,025,000 judgement (minus $28,000 for legal expenses incurred by the state of California.) Port Chicago Disaster. Ampex founded to manufacture radar parts. Later it builds tape recording equipment. |
| 1945 | United Nations Conference in San Francisco. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. |