-famous for film industry 

- every person heard about Hollywood or Silicon Valley

But first:

- Europeans first arrived in California in 1542 (there were a number of Native American tribes)

- had different cultures and languages 

- were mostly peaceful people 

- they hunted, fished and gathered nuts and fruit 

- another 200 years later the Spanish decided to build missions in 1769

- missions were build in effort to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism 

- two of those missions would become the famous cities San Diego and Los Angeles 

- Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, California became a province of Mexico

- population kept growing in the following years because many settlers were moving to California from the east

On September 9. 1850, California was admitted into the Union as the 31st State

- today California is the state with the largest population of the United States 

- California‘s Capital is Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles are more famous

Is also a state of contrasts

- there are Mountains covered in snow, deserts with high temperatures or giant redwoods (tallest trees on earth) in the national parks
- California‘s nickname „Golden State“ because of the gold found in 1848

- James Marshall first discovered gold at Sutter‘s Mill on January 24, 1848

- was building a Mill for John Sutter when he saw something shiny

- Sutter ans Marshall tried to keep their secret, but the word spread quickly and newspaper reported the discovery 

- after a short time 300,000 people rushed to California, hoping to become rich 

- came from all over the world

- most people arrived in 1849

- some gold-seekers made a substantial amount of money during the gold rush

- on average, half of the people made modest profit 

- the late arrivals made Little or wound up losing money

- miners separate the gold from the dirt and gravel with the method of panning 

- placed gravel and water into a pan and shook it back and forth until the gold worked the way until the bottom of the pan
- later the gold rush miners used „rockers“ to mine
- Rockers = gold mining implements to use more gravel
- miners needed many supplies to find gold
- most important tools: pan, shovel and pick axe
- other vital things: living supplies like beans, flour or coffee  
- slept in tents or built camps where gold was found
- sometimes camps grew fast and became a town, known as boomtowns
- San Francisco‘s population increased around 30 times in a short time
- boomtowns disappeared as swift as they came
- settlers looked for new opportunities and left the settlements after the area ran out of gold
- are called ghost towns and are popular tourist attractions today 
- gold rush reached his peak in 1852
- then the number of miners slowly declined but the settlement continued and by the end of the decade California’s population had grown to 380,000