"Map of Panama," cartographer unknown, 1850. Larger.
California is now home to well over 34 million people, putting it well ahead of nearest rivals Texas, New York, and Florida for largest state population. But at least one early visitor didn't think it would turn out that way.
Leonard Kip was an Albany lawyer who sailed for California in 1849. Once here, he wasn't at all bullish on future prospects, and offered this delightfully dead-wrong prediction of California's future.
A climate presenting the most insufferable extremes of heat and cold in the same twenty-four hours; a soil, nineteen-twentieths of which can not be cultivated; and utter want of valuable timber, except where it can not be used to advantage; such a dearth of water, that one can walk a hundred miles without seeing a running stream. . . .
Some years hence, and it is probable that this may be the picture. A few farms may be scattered through the richer valleys of the country; a few incorporated companies, with heavy steam machinery, may be successfully pounding out the fine gold, which scarcely now repays the labor of mere unaided hands; a few little towns may be scattered here and there, the inhabitants of which will obtain a living by supplying the thinly settled country; and for the general supply, a few little brigs and schooners may ply up and down from Panama, to which city, and which alone, will roll the gigantic stream of the commerce of the Indies.
"Butte City," watercolor by George Henry Burgess, c. 1854. Larger.
Prospectors who came late to California during the Gold Rush didn't find a serene landscape of majestic hills, valleys, and winding rivers. Often, they encountered a sea of makeshift settlements instead.
Leonard Kip, a young lawyer from Albany, set out for California in 1849 and chronicled his journeys. Here he describes arriving at mining settlements along the Mokelumne River.
Standing upon the brow of the steep hill, which, in an almost uninterrupted range, overlooks this region of the mines, the observer sees the Mukelemne river winding along a quarter of a mile below him: now racing so swiftly through a series of narrow passes, that the water, in its precipitate haste over the huge stones which impede it, becomes but a mass of hissing foam; then sinking away, until it scarcely rivals the merest meadow brook; again, spreading out into a little lake with a scarcely perceptible current. . . . Here and there the white tops of little tents peep out from some friendly nook; a limited number of distant forms can be perceived, moving along the bank of the river, or delving in some spot where the falling water has left the bottom dry . . . Hundreds of scattered tents are pitched along the dry ravines which lead into the river. These ravines, winding between the hills, occur at very short distances, and together give employment to almost as large a population as the river itself.
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