On September 9th, California celebrated its 165th year as a state. In honor of the Golden State's birthday, this two-part episode of the Politi-Cal Podcast looks at the history of statehood in California.
This includes how California first became a state and how people have tried (over 200 times) to divide it up into more states since then. These efforts range from serious (that time the state legislature and the governor actually did vote to split up the state) to silly (that time protesters near the Oregon border stopped traffic and handed out flyers proclaiming their independence) to comically bizarre (that time a professional golfer / actor tried to turn a World War II ship into an independent nation / tax-free seafood processing plant off the California coast). Enjoy!
Infographics
Check out our Image Gallery for graphics from this week's episode...
Sources
Want to explore even more about statehood in California?
Learn straight from from the people who covered it first...
Jane Braxton Little (The
Sacramento Bee), 17 March 2015
Glenda Anderson (The Press Democrat), 3 March 2015
John Healey (Los Angeles Times), 28 January 2015
John Wildermuth (SFGate), 13 September 2014
Jim Miller (The
Sacramento Bee), 12 September 2014
Andrew Creasey (Appeal-Democrat),
23 July 2014
James Erwin (Mental
Floss), 21 July 2014
Alice Walton (89.3 KPCC), 16 July 2014
Katy Steinmetz (TIME),
15 July 2014
Record Searchlight (Chico
Enterprise-Record), 24 June 2014
Staff Writer (Los
Angeles Times), 4 June 2014
Eric Vodden (Appeal-Democrat),
16 April 2014
Michael R. Blood (AP/USA
Today), 21 February 2014
Bianca Barragan
(Curbed LA), 5 February 2014
Greg Baumann (Silicon
Valley Business Journal), 4 February 2014
Lee Romney (Los
Angeles Times), 23 January 2014
David Siders (The Sacramento Bee), 11 December 2013
Peter Hecht (The Sacramento Bee), 10 October 2013
Dennis Hevesi (The New
York Times), 27 April 2012
Chris Dixon (The Inertia), 15 November 2011
Fred Swegles (The
Orange County Register), 25 October 2011 (updated 21 August 2013)
Stan Statham (Record
Searchlight), 17 July 2011
Steve Harvey (Los
Angeles Times), 16 July 2011
Chris Clarke (KCET), 13 July 2011
Zach Behrens (KCET), 30 June 2011
Robert J. Lopez (Los
Angeles Times), 30 June 2011
Nathan Masters (KCET), 14 April 2011
Warren Netz (Millbrae Library/San Mateo County Library), 4
March 2011
Scott Timberg (The New
York Times), 12 December 2008
Pat Joseph (Grist), 13 May 2005
Christopher Hall (Via/AAA), September/October 2003
Jim Evans (Sacramento
News & Review), 3 January 2002
Richard Cavendish (History
Today), 9 September 2000 (Vol. 50)
Carl Ingram (Los
Angeles Times), 19 September 1993
George Ramos (Los
Angeles Times), 12 July 1993
Scott Armstrong (The
Christian Science Monitor), 15 June 1993
Jennifer Warren (Los
Angeles Times), 30 May 1992
Jennifer Warren (Los
Angeles Times), 24 December 1991
Brad Knickerbocker (The
Christian Science Monitor), 15 October 1991
Seymour Korman (Chicago Tribune), 21 June 1965
Walter Ames (Los
Angeles Times), 10 December 1953
Books:
James Erwin (Greenwood Press), 2007
Chris Dixon (Chronicle Books), 2011
Stephen S. Birdsall, Eugene Palka, Jon Malinowski, &
Margo L. Price (Wiley), 4 August 2008
Research, Data, & More Information:
California Department of Parks and Recreation
California Department of Parks and Recreation
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 31 January 2014
Mark DiCamillo & Mervin Field (The Field Poll), December
11th 2013
William Henry Ellison (The
Southwestern Historical Quarterly), October 1913 (Vol. 17, No. 2)
Ryan H. Fateh (Vanderbilt
Journal of Transnational Law), May 29th 2013 (Vol. 46:899)
HISTORY
Dr. Troy Johnson (Cal State Long Beach/NPS)
Library of Congress, American Memory Collection
San Fernando
Valley Historical Society
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Decided January
22, 1970, Modified April 10, 1970
U.S. Supreme Court, Argued 13 November 1963, Decided 15 June
1964
Sounds:
CBS/MSU
Vincent Voice Library PD Holdings, 8 December 1941
Recording cleaned up and encoded for upload to Wikimedia
Commons by W. Guy Finley
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 2.0 Generic license (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Recorded by guitarguy1985 via SoundBible, Uploaded 1 June
2010
Licensed under the
Creative Commons Sampling
Plus 1.0 license
Recorded by Mike Koenig via SoundBible, Uploaded 3 October
2011
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC 3.0 US)
Recorded by Mike Koenig via SoundBible, Uploaded 4 April
2013
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC 3.0 US)
Recorded by Mike Koenig via SoundBible, Uploaded 18 February
2011
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC 3.0 US)
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