History Of California Research Articles

Response to Paul Spickard and Kendall Lovely, “Respecting the Ancestors: On Repatriating American Indian Remains,” California History 100, no. 4 (Winter 2023)

Response to Paul Spickard and Kendall Lovely, “Respecting the Ancestors: On Repatriating American Indian Remains,” <i>California History</i> 100, no. 4 (Winter 2023)

Response to Paul Spickard and Kendall Lovely, “Respecting the Ancestors: On Repatriating American Indian Remains,” California History 100, no. 4 (Winter 2023)

Response to Paul Spickard and Kendall Lovely, “Respecting the Ancestors: On Repatriating American Indian Remains,” <i>California History</i> 100, no. 4 (Winter 2023)

Brushes with History

Against a backdrop of other murals marking national territories and Manifest Destiny—notably, William Leutze’s stereochrome Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way completed for the U.S. Capitol during the Civil War, with its iconic depiction of a mostly monochrome van of westward migrants on their way over mountains to California’s Golden Gate—this article focuses on the way artists Judy Baca and Ana Teresa Fernández have both deconstructed physical and symbolic walls to open up a view of migrations across the U.S.–Mexico border as natural. The essay examines how each artist’s work gets to the same end vision but through different starting points in relation to history. Baca—in her ongoing History of California (a.k.a., the Great Wall of Los Angeles), and in her mural La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra, California—has brought repressed or erased history and people to light, and she explicitly envisions the border wall as unnatural. By contrast, Fernández optically erases the border wall at Tijuana / San Ysidro / the Pacific and other places along la frontera, employing Martha Stewart paint to create chinks and gashes in the wall’s ideological veneer, brushing blue onto corroding iron to, she says, pull “down the sky to kiss the ground again.” Baca represents what has been erased while Fernández erases what has been represented, but both do so to reconnect a California landscape that has been bifurcated by the border wall. Considered in relation to the history and historiography of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands—and in particular to work on the physical manifestation of the border through markers, monuments, fences and walls designed to split lands and peoples—this article considers these artists’ work as powerful demurrals, defiant visual protests and imaginaries that affirm inclusion, empathy, and human and ecological connections across the border between Alta and Baja California.

Severity of a megafire reduced by interactions of wildland fire suppression operations and previous burns

Abstract Burned area and proportion of high severity fire have been increasing in the western USA, and reducing wildfire severity with fuel treatments or other means is key for maintaining fire-prone dry forests and avoiding fire-catalyzed forest loss. Despite the unprecedented scope of firefighting operations in recent years, their contribution to patterns of wildfire severity is rarely quantified. Here we investigate how wildland fire suppression operations and past fire severity interacted to affect severity patterns of the northern third of the 374 000 ha Dixie Fire, the largest single fire in California history. We developed a map of the intensity and type of suppression operations and a statistical model of the Composite Burn Index (CBI) including weather, fuels, and terrain variables during the fire to quantify the importance of operations and prior fires on wildfire severity. Wildfire severity was estimated without operations and previous fires and then compared with modeled severity under observed conditions. Previous low and moderate-severity fire without operations decreased CBI by 38% and 19% respectively. Heavy operations and offensive firing in the footprint of past fires lowered fire severity even more compared to prior fire alone. Medium operations and defensive firing reduced but did not eliminate the moderating effects of past fires. This analysis demonstrates important interactions between suppression operations and previous burns that drive patterns of fire severity and vegetation dynamics in post-fire landscapes. Given the need to reduce wildfire severity to maintain forest resilience, particularly with a warming climate, increased attention to using operations and severity patterns of previous fires known to reduce wildfire severity in megafires are likely to increase forest resilience and improve ecological outcomes.

Catastrophic fires, human displacement, and real estate prices in California

Millions of people are displaced by natural disasters each year, yet little is known about how evacuees affect host communities. We analyze the migratory effects of the most destructive fire in California history, the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed over 18,000 structures and displaced roughly 50,000 people. By merging geospatial information on the fire’s footprint with Zillow’s housing transaction data, we estimate both the spatial and temporal effects of the fire on real estate prices at a granular level. A number of important insights emerge. First, within 25 miles of the fire’s footprint, home prices increased by 13 percent in the six-week aftermath of the fire. Effects decay with distance and are statistically insignificant beyond 100 miles. Second, effects are detected within two weeks of the fire, fully materialize within four weeks, and are persistent up to ten months (which exhausts our period of consideration). Results are consistent with the relocation decisions of evacuees and are robust to a variety of specifications and modeling assumptions.

The Camp fire and perinatal health: An example of the generalized synthetic control method to identify susceptible windows of exposure.

The November 2018 Camp fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history, but its effects on reproductive health are not known. We linked California birth records from 2017-2019 to daily smoke levels using U.S. EPA Air Quality System (AQS) PM2.5 data and NOAA Hazard Mapping System smoke plume polygons during the Camp fire. In the main analysis, pregnancies were considered exposed if they had median AQS PM2.5 levels above 50 μg/m3 for at least 7 days during November 8-22, 2018. We calculated rates of preterm birth and the infant sex ratio based on week of conception and used the generalized synthetic control method to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated and to propose a novel approach to identify potential critical weeks of exposure during pregnancy. We found associations between Camp fire-related smoke exposure and rates of preterm birth, with a risk difference (RD) = 0.005, 95% CI 0.001, 0.010. Exposure during week 10 of pregnancy was consistently associated with increased preterm birth (RD = 0.030, 95% CI 0.004, 0.056). We did not observe differences in the infant sex ratio. Camp fire smoke exposure was associated with increased rates of preterm birth, with sensitive windows in the first trimester.

“A Western Outpost of the Punjab”

By forcefully inserting itself within the landscape and history of California, “near the confluence of the Feather and Sacramento rivers” in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Bhira Backhaus’s Under the Lemon Trees (2009) moves beyond the common tropes of Asian American fictions in which memory is invoked primarily in terms of nostalgia or loss, to emplace itself within the very specific geographical locale and physical landscape of the small town of Oak Grove in northern California (48). The text adopts an emphatically regional frame as a strategic move to stake a claim to inclusion within the body politic of the nation through filiations to the land that have been forged by living in close proximity with it—working the soil, learning its many qualities, and becoming conversant with seasonal rhythms. In doing so, Under the Lemon Trees gestures to more-than-human kinship structures and a sense of place that transcends institutional taxonomies of “citizen” and “immigrant” alike.

3D Geometry and Slip Distribution in the Long Beach Earthquake Gate, Newport–Inglewood Fault, Los Angeles, California

ABSTRACT We present a new, 3D representation of the Long Beach restraining bend system along the Newport–Inglewood fault (NIF), Los Angeles, California. The NIF is an active strike-slip system that cuts over 60 km through densely populated metropolitan Los Angeles and poses one of the greatest deterministic seismic hazards in the United States (California Division of Mines and Geology, 1988). Part of the NIF sourced the 1933 M 6.4 Long Beach earthquake, which claimed ∼120 lives and remains one of the deadliest events in California history (Barrows, 1974; Hauksson and Gross, 1991). The event is thought to have arrested at Signal Hill within the Long Beach restraining bend, which is formed by a left step in the NIF (Hough and Graves, 2020). Events that rupture through Signal Hill could generate larger (M ≈7) events that pose a significant hazard to urban Los Angeles. Our analysis integrates a diverse range of datasets, including over 4200 fault and horizon penetrations from 243 wells, 2D seismic reflection surveys, field maps, machine-learning-based tomography studies, and the U.S. Geological Survey QFaults surface traces. We show that the fault system in Long Beach has three main strike-slip segments connected by orthogonal reverse faults. The strike-slip faults are nonvertical and nonplanar, merge at depth, and extend through the seismogenic crust. The Long Beach restraining bend system presents numerous rupture pathways and arrest points that NIF earthquakes may follow. We apply a novel, map-based restoration to quantify how much total slip has passed through each of the fault segments. About 375 m of total slip is partitioned into the three main fault strands, including the Reservoir Hill fault (≈75 m), the Northeast Flank fault (≈120 m), and the Cherry Hill fault (≈209 m). This slip partitioning informs our understanding of the tendency of ruptures to involve different fault segments or arrest at specific junctures.

History of Early California in the Spanish, Mexican, and Early American Eras - Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California. By Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2023. Pp. 392. $45.00 cloth; $34.95 e-book.

History of Early California in the Spanish, Mexican, and Early American Eras - Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California. By Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2023. Pp. 392. $45.00 cloth; $34.95 e-book.

Dividing the Indian Race

Despite being the first Native American to author a novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), John Rollin Ridge and his writings have long troubled scholars. Ridge’s focus on Mexican Americans, racist portrayal of California Indians, and embrace of US belonging refuse easy analysis within the single identity category-focused frameworks of Native studies and Chicanx studies, and his presence in gold rush California as a Cherokee settler complicates scholarly approaches to the racial history of California. This essay uses a historicized engagement with racial formation theory to reevaluate Ridge’s work, including his novel, newspaper article in The True Daily Delta, and Hesperian magazine articles. Diverging from prior scholarship that reads Ridge’s work through the lens of present-day racial categories, this study approaches racial categories as shifting, connected to structures of power, and imbricated with gender to understand how Ridge thought of himself in relation to both California Indians and Mexican Americans and how he tried to intervene into the American racial discourse. Ridge desired recognition and inclusion from the US settler state, and he used hegemonic notions of masculinity to make his case. This prompted him to distance himself from those unable to conform to standards of appropriate manhood. I contend that Ridge’s desire for recognition led him to suggest that his own Cherokee people were more closely related to Mexican Americans than to California Indians. The complexity of Ridge’s stance and racial positioning in California demonstrate the possibilities of a reading practice informed by a relational approach to racial formation.

Improving Wildfire Readiness Among Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Asthma: Applying a Population Health Approach to Climate Change.

As a result of climate change, wildfire frequency, duration, and severity are increasing in the United States. Exposure to wildfire-related air pollutants can lead to negative health outcomes, particularly among patients with preexisting respiratory diseases (e.g., asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and those who are at higher risk for developing these conditions. Underserved communities are disproportionately affected for multiple reasons, including lack of financial and social resources, increased exposure to air pollutants at home and at work, and impaired access to health care. To best serve clinically high-risk and underserved populations, health systems must leverage community public health data, develop and mobilize a wildfire preparedness action plan to identify populations at high risk, and implement interventions to mitigate the consequences of poor air quality. University of California, Davis Health, located at the epicenter of the largest wildfires in California's history, has developed the 5 pillar Wildfire Population Health Approach: (1) identify clinically at-risk and underserved patient populations using well-validated, condition-targeted registries; (2) assemble multidisciplinary care teams to understand the needs of these communities and patients; (3) create custom analytics and wildfire-risk stratification; (4) develop care pathways based on wildfire-risk tiers by disease, risk of exposure, and health care access; and (5) identify outcome measures tailored to interventions with a commitment to continuous, iterative improvement efforts. The Wildfire Population Health Approach provides an action plan for health systems and care teams to meet the needs of clinically at-risk and underserved patients affected by the increasing health threat posed by climate change-related wildfires.

Book Review. Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Malcolm Harris. New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 720 pp. Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Jenny Odell. New York, Random House, 2023. 400 pp

Children of Silicon Valley Turn Toward Marx Review of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Malcolm Harris. New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2023 and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Jenny Odell. New York, Random House, 2023.

Rediscovering Lost Narratives: The Hidden Cache of a High-Status Indigenous Family at Mission La Purísima Concepción and its Significance in California History

Rediscovering Lost Narratives: The Hidden Cache of a High-Status Indigenous Family at Mission La Purísima Concepción and its Significance in California History

Review: Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, by Malcolm Harris

Review: <i>Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World</i>, by Malcolm Harris

Food for all? Wildfire ash fuels growth of diverse eukaryotic plankton.

In December 2017, one of the largest wildfires in California history, the Thomas Fire, created a large smoke and ash plume that extended over the northeastern Pacific Ocean. Here, we explore the impact of Thomas Fire ash deposition on seawater chemistry and the growth and composition of natural microbial communities. Experiments conducted in coastal California waters during the Thomas Fire revealed that leaching of ash in seawater resulted in significant additions of dissolved nutrients including inorganic nitrogen (nitrate, nitrite and ammonium), silicic acid, metals (iron, nickel, cobalt and copper), organic nitrogen and organic carbon. After exposure to ash leachate at high (0.25 g ash l-1) and low (0.08 g ash l-1) concentrations for 4 days, natural microbial communities had 59-154% higher particulate organic carbon concentrations than communities without ash leachate additions. Additionally, a diverse assemblage of eukaryotic microbes (protists) responded to the ash leachate with taxa from 11 different taxonomic divisions increasing in relative abundance compared with control treatments. Our results suggest that large fire events can be important atmospheric sources of nutrients (particularly nitrogen) to coastal marine systems, where, through leaching of various nutrients, ash may act as a 'food for all' in protist communities.

Recreating the California New Year's Flood Event of 1997 in a Regionally Refined Earth System Model

AbstractThe 1997 New Year's flood event was the most costly in California's history. This compound extreme event was driven by a category 5 atmospheric river that led to widespread snowmelt. Extreme precipitation, snowmelt, and saturated soils produced heavy runoff causing widespread inundation in the Sacramento Valley. This study recreates the 1997 flood using the Regionally Refined Mesh capabilities of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (RRM‐E3SM) under prescribed ocean conditions. Understanding the processes causing extreme events informs practical efforts to anticipate and prepare for such events in the future, and also provides a rich context to evaluate model skill in representing extremes. Three California‐focused RRM grids, with horizontal resolution refinement of 14 km down to 3.5 km, and six forecast lead times, 28 December 1996 at 00Z through 30 December 1996 at 12Z, are assessed for their ability to recreate the 1997 flood. Planetary to synoptic scale atmospheric circulations and integrated vapor transport are weakly influenced by horizontal resolution refinement over California. Topography and mesoscale circulations, such as the Sierra barrier jet, are better represented at finer horizontal resolutions resulting in better estimates of storm total precipitation and storm duration snowpack changes. Traditional time‐series and causal analysis frameworks are used to examine runoff sensitivities state‐wide and above major reservoirs. These frameworks show that horizontal resolution plays a more prominent role in shaping reservoir inflows, namely the magnitude and time‐series shape, than forecast lead time, 2‐to‐4 days prior to the 1997 flood onset.

The Golden State’s Veiled Dichotomy

Abstract Visions of the West and specifically California as a free domain captivated many Americans leading up to, during, and after the Gold Rush. This perception was a myth that did not mesh with the reality of the blatant slavery and racism that existed there. This dichotomy remained largely veiled since then, only to resurface as recent scholarship revealed that California was not a shining beacon of virtuousness in the mid-nineteenth century. This article explores the impact of California’s overt tolerance for racism and slavery during its formative years of statehood. The legislated but unjust denial of civil rights to the state’s Black community also impacted its Chinese, Californios, and Indigenous peoples, with the latter group enduring horrific genocide. Their collective struggle for equality in a free state remained entangled in a web of statewide bigotry and White dominance that permeated all three branches of the state government. Interwoven with such inconsistencies is the scandalous development of San Quentin prison, a financial sieve that facilitated the slaveholding lessee’s largely unreported for-profit kidnapping and sale of two Black inmates (one a slave and the other a freeman) in 1855. The active racism, the cases of free and fugitive slaves being returned to their owners under the state’s own unique fugitive slave law, and the abduction of these two Black prisoners echo similar behaviors in slave states. They lay bare the myth of a free California that was, on the contrary, connected to the national slavery conundrum and was not the glowing outpost of freedom often described then in the eastern press and still believed by many, even today. Suffice it to say that the origins of the current reparations movement for California’s eligible Blacks can be traced to the mid-1850s history of California.

Disease in History

In this essay, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine describes how she connected her interest in science and medicine to California history in her “Disease in History” course. She describes the course, how she developed the syllabus, and the ways her students responded. While difficult in some respects, she explains that the course worked well post-COVID. She ends by encouraging historians to think of diseases as historical actors and agents of change.

Pseudo-Olympics in California: From Circus Shows and Local Sports Competitions to a Mass Statewide Event

Since Pierre de Coubertin’s revival of the modern Olympic games, the state of California has hosted the Olympics three times and is currently preparing for the games in Los Angeles in 2028. This paper attempts to add to the history of California’s Olympic legacy by examining the period prior to 1896 and demonstrating that the Olympic idea had been firmly rooted in California long before the revival of the modern Olympic games and the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Themes alluding to the Olympic idea had been exploited in California as early as the mid-nineteenth century, i.e. the time of the US annexation. In 1893 the Olympic Club in San Francisco organized the Ancient Greco-Roman Games with a statewide impact. The association of those spectacles with ancient Greek art or games attests to Californians’ awareness of ancient athletics and to the significant role of the San Francisco events in a historical perspective. As the years passed the knowledge about sports with Olympic associations increased among Californians, and the 1893 Ancient Greco-Roman Games in San Francisco can be successfully considered the largest pseudo-Olympic sports event before the 1896 Summer Olympics.

California’s 2021 Gubernatorial Recall: Field Notes

In 2021, the second attempt in California history to recall a governor ended in a resounding victory for the Democratic incumbent. Unlike the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003, auspicious political conditions helped enable Gavin Newsom’s survival; these included a large Democratic advantage in voter registration and an all-mail-ballot election that reduced participation costs. Turning points in the process included an extension of the signature-gathering deadline and the emergence of a polemical candidate who helped energize Democratic voters. These developments re-exposed flaws in the state’s recall process and have prompted calls to reform the qualification procedures and the dual ballot format, which permits the election of a potentially anti-majoritarian replacement who receives a small fraction of the plurality vote.