California in Old Time Radio

The rest of the country sees California as being a little weird, perhaps more than just a little. If America is, indeed, the Land of Opportunity, then California I more than a place where Opportunity knocks, it keeps you on Speed-dial! There have been several waves of immigration to California, and each group moving there expects to find their fortunes in a different way. With each wave, it is usually the first to arrive who actually find what they are after, but there are so many riches in California, hidden and otherwise, that fortunes can still be made.

California is often referred to as "the Land of Fruits and Nuts", supposedly because the region's gentle Mediterranean climate allows the cultivation of crops which do not do as well in the rest of the country, especially things like almonds, grapes, olives, and avocados. Oranges and grapefruits are also important California export, but California growers face competition form the Florida Citrus industry. However, the real reason for the "Fruits and Nuts" appellation has to do with how the rest of the country perceives California and especially, Californians.

No matter what your opinion of Californians may be, it is worth remembering that there are a lot of them. California has become the largest state in the Union by population, however, because it is the third largest in land area (after Alaska and Texas) all those people can spread out and the population density is not as intense or uncomfortable as some of the big cities back East. It should also be pointed out that not everyone out there is as crazy as the rest of the nation believes they are, although there are still plenty who fall into the "Fruits and Nuts" category.

Spanish missionaries began establishing a series of settlements along the California coast in 1769, linking a series of missions back to Old Mexico. Mexico took over California after their War for Independence. The Mexican-American War broke out in 1846 after the U.S. annexed Texas, and Californians were happy when Mexico ceded its Northern holdings in 1848's Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. More importantly, the same year, James W. Marshall, working at Sutter's Mill, noticed something shining in the stream that turned the millwheel, GOLD!

Not only did the California Gold Rush bring 300,000 optimistic "Forty-niners" into the territory, it helped to touch off a worldwide economic boom. It was cheaper to ship foodstuffs and trade goods over the Pacific from Australia, the Orient, or South America than overland from the U.S., and the Forty-niners paid with their gold dust. As with any gold rush, relatively few fortunes were made on the yellow metal directly, but with 300,000 people coming into the area, there were fortunes to be made.

With so much wealth, Congress was willing, even anxious to admit California into the Union, but in the pre-Civil War period, admission required passage of the Compromise of 1850, a package of related legislation aligning Free and Slave States before California could be admitted as a Free State. California gold was shipped East to support the Union, but California was still isolated enough that it was largely unaffected by the War Between the States. Soon after the War ended, the final spike in the First Transcontinental Railroad was driven at Promontory, Utah, and California became a much easier destination for immigrants to reach.

One of the most important waves of immigrants began early in the second decade of the Twentieth Century. In 1913, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company placed a team led by Cecil B. DeMille on a Southern Pacific train headed for Arizona to film location scenes for the film Squaw Man (1914). As soon as DeMille stepped on the platform in Flagstaff he was dissatisfied with the light and pushed his cast and crew back on the train to continue West toward Los Angeles. Other filmmakers, including D.W. Griffith had already settled in Hollywood to take advantage of the vast amounts of sunshine and cheap land for studios, but Squaw Man would be Hollywood's first feature-length film.

The glamor of Hollywood is an important part of California's cultural appeal, but a much less glamorous migration had its origins in the misguided farming practices of the Midwest. Years of drought and the economic crisis of the Great Depression forced many families off their farms and they were forced to place as many of their belongings as they could carry, along with the family, into whatever old cars they could find and join the migration along Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway to the Promised Land of California. Landowners in California sometimes welcomed these Dust Bowl refugees as cheap labor in the fields, but others feared the newcomers because they would strain the local economy to support them. Very soon, however, the War would kickstart an economic boom which would bring even more wealth to the State than had the Gold Rush.

The news of the Pearl Harbor Attack rattled coastal dwelling Californians who feared they would be the aggressor's next target. Although ultimately beyond the reach of the Imperial Japanese Navy, these fears were justified because California would be vital to the overall War effort. Enough of the State was still undeveloped and land cheap enough that US Army and Army Air Corps bases dotted the California map. Harbors at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego became centers of shipbuilding, bases for the Navy, and important embarkation points for troops headed for the Pacific Theater. The proximity of the Hollywood entertainment industry was an incredible boon to the USO, and a trooper who had grown up in the sticks had a very good chance of seeing several popular Stars live at a camp show held on his base.

The greatest boon of the WWII for California was the expansion of the defense and aviation industries. Factories in New York and Michigan had a solid head start over the West coast, California would rank third in armament production. Southern California's huge aircraft factories were manned by local as well as immigrant labor, and industry on this huge scale provided the wages to create a strong middle class which would possess an incredible purchasing power in the post-War period. The technological expansion of the aerospace in would also find expression in the growth of Silicon Valley during the last quarter of the Twentieth century.

Whether California's residents are truly "Fruits and Nuts" is largely a matter of perception. However, it cannot be argued that America would not be the America it is today if not for California.

See also: Earthquakes