California

California got its name from a 1510 Spanish novel about a mythical island ruled by warrior women and overflowing with gold. When Spanish explorers landed on the Baja coast in the 1530s, they honestly thought they'd found it. The name stuck, and so did the dream.

For thousands of years before any Europeans showed up, hundreds of thousands of Native people thrived here. The Chumash, Miwok, Pomo, Ohlone, and dozens of other tribes built complex societies across the coast, valleys, and mountains.

Starting in 1769, Spain built 21 missions along the coastline under Father Junipero Serra. The missions forced Native people into labor, and disease and brutal conditions devastated their populations.

Mexico took control in 1821, but not for long. In 1846, a group of American settlers seized the town of Sonoma and declared the Bear Flag Republic. It lasted about a month before the Mexican-American War swept it aside.

Then everything changed. In 1848, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill near Coloma. About 300,000 people flooded in, and California jumped straight to statehood in 1850.

But the Gold Rush was catastrophic for Native Californians. Settlers and state-funded militias killed thousands, and the Native population dropped from roughly 150,000 to around 30,000 by 1870. California didn't formally apologize until 2019.

On April 18, 1906, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake and three days of fire destroyed over 80% of San Francisco and killed more than 3,000 people. The city rebuilt itself in barely a decade.

In 1910, director D.W. Griffith shot the first movie ever made in Hollywood, a 17-minute silent film called In Old California. Filmmakers kept coming west, partly to dodge Thomas Edison's patent fees and partly because the sunshine let them shoot year-round. By 1915, the major studios had moved from New York, and a little Los Angeles neighborhood became the movie capital of the world.

During World War II, the government forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. Two-thirds were U.S. citizens, and not one was ever found guilty of espionage.

Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, then take a ferry to Alcatraz. Stand beneath the General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park, the largest living tree on Earth by volume. Drive Highway 1 along Big Sur, visit Manzanar National Historic Site, and eat fish tacos on the beach in San Diego. Grab sourdough bread in San Francisco and an In-N-Out burger anywhere you can find one.