When photography was invented in the 1820s, California hadn’t even been awarded statehood. Mexico had control of the region, and the first organised group of American settlers wouldn’t arrive until 1841. The Bear Flag Revolt (after which California was an independent nation for 25 days) and the Mexican-American War ensued, but photographs only really started telling California’s story after gold was struck in 1848.
Click through this gallery to see extraordinary early images of the Golden State, all of which are over a century old...
24 January 1848 became an auspicious day in Californian history when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. This moment marked the onset of the California Gold Rush and triggered the largest mass migration event in US history. California’s population tripled to 308,000 between 1847 and 1860, and the area’s Indigenous residents were almost wiped out as a result. In this image from around 1850, miners can be seen working sluice boxes with pans and wielding shovels. California was declared America’s 31st state that year – in large part a result of the Gold Rush.
Taken by Robert Vance, a renowned daguerreotypist (early photographer), this photo captures public mourning following the fatal shooting of James King of William, editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. King of William was gunned down outside his office on 14 May 1856 by rival journalist and local politician James P Casey, who was later publicly lynched for the murder by a mob. On the day of his death, King of William had published a story accusing Casey of election fraud.
Originally a Spanish mission and pueblo, San Francisco boomed with the Gold Rush and began emerging as a major city in the 1860s, further prospering from the 1859 Comstock Lode silver strike in neighbouring Nevada. Carleton Watkins captured this cityscape in 1864 from Rincon Hill, which features scores of houses and factories already jostling for space in the burgeoning metropolis. In the distance, ships can be seen docked in San Francisco Bay – the orange frame of the Golden Gate Bridge notably absent, as it would be for another 70 years.
Pictured here in an 1865 image by Carleton Watkins, the picturesque Yosemite Valley made history the year before when it became the first pocket of land to ever be protected for public enjoyment in the United States. Conservationists used photographs by Watkins and others in their petition to President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Yosemite Land Grant into law in 1864, bringing Yosemite Valley (and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees) under state control.
The transcontinental railroad enabled rapid travel across North America and helped the US become one of the world's most powerful economies by the end of the 19th century. Through the 1860s the Central Pacific Railroad built tracks out of Sacramento in California and struck east through the Sierra Nevada mountains, while the Union Pacific Railroad started building westward from the Iowa-Nebraska border. The two lines met at Promontory Summit in Utah in 1869. In this Carleton Watkins image, Chinese labourers work on the Secret Town trestle in California’s Placer County.
When this photo was taken in 1868 or 1869, the notorious prison on Alcatraz Island was still a long way off incarcerating the likes of mobster Al Capone and murderer-turned-ornithologist Robert Stroud. Instead, it was being used as a military prison, which held Confederate sympathisers and those accused of treason during the American Civil War (1861-65). The rocky island lies in San Francisco Bay, where it became home to the first working lighthouse on the West Coast in 1854.
You might need a long hard stare to make out the snow-capped form of Mount Shasta in the background of this albumen print from 1870. The twin-peaked dormant volcano lies in the Cascade Range of northern California and its last recorded eruption was just 84 years before this image. It was scaled for what’s believed to be the first time in 1854, and was named in 1827 for the local Shastan peoples.
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In this image, a Paiute woman is doing laundry at her home in Yosemite Valley. The Paiute peoples belonged to two distinct tribal groups that originally inhabited parts of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Oregon – the Northern Paiute, who were related to the Mono people of California, and the Southern Paiute. Mono Paiute peoples mixed with another Native American group (the Miwok) to form a mixed tribe called the Ahwahneechee. This name comes from Ahwahnee – meaning a gaping, mouth-like place – which was their word for Yosemite Valley.
Held on Independence Day (4 July) 1871, the first civic parade in Los Angeles was an opportunity for the city’s residents and public servants to come together for a day of celebrations. This photograph depicts volunteer firemen from the Los Angeles Fire Department with their horse-drawn fire truck and wagons in front of the Downey Block, which was demolished around 1904. Today, the Spring Street Courthouse of the Los Angeles Superior Court stands in its place.
In 1872, a company of US cavalry troops set out to forcibly remove a collective of Native American Modoc people from their ancestral lands and return them to a reservation. What started as a firefight between the leaders of the two sides soon escalated into full-scale war, which lasted from that winter until spring 1873. The conflict – ultimately won by the US army – began in Oregon but spilled over the state border into California. Here, a wounded man is carried on a mule through a military camp in Siskiyou County.
Camulos Ranch was owned by the de Valle family, who were among the most prosperous Hispanic families in the Santa Clara River Valley when this photo was taken in 1876. Several generations of de Valles lived and worked the land here between 1839 and 1924, with the ranch producing 15,000 gallons of wine and brandy a year by 1871. The historic site is now home to the Rancho Camulos Museum, a National Historic Landmark where visitors can get a taste of what rural life was like in early California.
Now America’s second largest city, Los Angeles – like San Francisco – was a Spanish pueblo during the 18th century. After the Mexican-American War (1846-48), which led to Mexico selling California to the US, Los Angeles was somewhat neglected until 1881, when it was linked by railway to the rest of the country. Pictured here is a snapshot of Victorian LA; if you look closely, the Star-Spangled Banner can be faintly seen flying above the vintage cable car.
It wasn’t until 2014 that the US Labor Department formally recognised the Chinese immigrants that helped build the transcontinental railroad. As many as 20,000 worked on the Central Pacific Railroad between 1865 and 1869. By the 1870s, almost all 63,000 Chinese immigrants were based in California, with a large community forming in San Francisco. Many of them opened businesses, like the butcher and grocery shop pictured here. As xenophobia rose, the immigration of Chinese workers to the US was halted in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese labourers from moving to America and refused citizenship rights to those already there.
Named after the wife of Colonel Robert S Baker, Santa Monica’s founder, the Arcadia Hotel was immediately the talk of the town when it opened in 1887. It was one of the most sought-after stays on the Pacific Coast, with a wooden staircase leading directly from its clifftop perch to the beach, as well as an early iteration of a roller coaster connecting the hotel to the town centre. Seen in this image, the gondola of the Thompson Switchback Gravity Railroad held 10 passengers, with round trips costing five cents. The Arcadia was torn down in 1909.
Opium was introduced to America with the wave of Chinese immigration, and by the late 1880s it was estimated that around 300 opium dens were operating in San Francisco alone. Despite an ordinance banning the drug in 1875, the highly addictive substance continued to be widely used. The dens provided space for this dangerous habit, offering all the necessary equipment and beds to recline on when the effects took hold.
San Francisco’s Cliff House is something of a national treasure. The original, pictured here in 1890, was built in 1863 and initially catered only to the elite who could afford to drive the toll road between the city centre and the resort. It attracted less affluent clientele as time progressed. Four years after this photograph, the Cliff House burned down – and it did so again in 1907. The current incarnation, a Neoclassical concrete affair, has been closed since 2020, though there are plans to revive it later in 2024.
Also known as the Midwinter Fair, this World’s Fair was hosted in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park across six months in 1894. It was intended to resuscitate California’s troubled economy, with more than a hundred buildings erected solely for the exposition and an estimated two million attendees. Here, circus performer Achille Philion balances on a precarious looking spiral structure while standing on a ball. We hope no one tried this at home...
Olives were brought to California from the Mediterranean during the Spanish missions of the 18th century, and today it remains the only major olive-growing state in America thanks to its balmy climate. In this photo, taken sometime in the early 1900s, a taskforce of mostly women working at a food-processing plant can be seen sifting through mountains of olives and putting the best ones into jars.
Before California was awarded statehood in 1850, a community had already spent a decade forming at the site now known as Sacramento. Established by German-born Swiss pioneer John Sutter – whose sawmill was the site of the 1848 gold strike – the settlement started life as a trading post and agricultural centre, before mining operations sparked rapid growth. Sacramento was declared California’s state capital in 1854; its Capitol building (pictured) was completed in 1874 and is based on the US Capitol in Washington DC.
In May 1901, President William McKinley travelled to San Francisco on official business, attending events including the dedication of a hospital at the Presidio and the launch of the battleship USS Ohio (pictured here). Just four months later, McKinley became the third US president to be assassinated in office, when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot him at close range at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Theodore Roosevelt then assumed the presidency.
Exactly two years after McKinley came to San Francisco, President Roosevelt arrived in California. The highlight of his visit was a camping trip to Yosemite National Park, which had been created in 1890. Roosevelt was joined by Scottish-born environmentalist John Muir, who was instrumental in Yosemite’s designation. Here, the two men pose at Glacier Point, one of the park’s most impressive viewpoints. Roosevelt added the formerly state-controlled areas of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the national park in 1906.
Florida might be the state most synonymous with oranges, but California also has a fascinating history with the fruit – and it all centres on Riverside. It was here that the first navel orange trees in California were shipped from Brazil, and one of them still survives today. So renowned is Riverside for its oranges that the California Citrus State Historic Park was founded here in 1993. Taken 90 years prior, this photo documents hard-working orange pickers in the early 20th century.
Back in the 1850s, there was little more than a small adobe structure where Hollywood’s dream-making movie studios now stand. But by the 1890s Hollywood (formerly a pastoral community called Cahuenga Valley) was being dissected into tree-lined avenues and upmarket homes. By the turn of the century it had its own post office, hotel and street car. It was incorporated in 1903 and merged with LA in 1910. This photo from around 1905 shows flowers lining the sidewalk in front of French-born painter Paul de Longpre’s mansion, on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Avenue.
By the time this photo was taken in 1905, Santa Monica had surfaced as California’s premier seaside destination. Seen here are dozens of people – very modestly dressed for a day at the beach, as per the attitudes of the era – gathered on the sand in front of the North Beach Bath House. Just out of shot, the bath house opened in 1894 and was a top resort in the area for many years, complete with saltwater plunge pools, a restaurant, a bowling pavilion and a groundbreaking camera obscura.
On 18 April 1906, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco. The San Andreas Fault (on which the city sits) ruptured north to south, and so mighty was the tremor that it could be felt in Oregon and Nevada. In the quake and the devastating fires that followed, more than 3,000 people lost their lives and over 28,000 buildings were razed. It has gone down in history as one of California’s deadliest natural disasters.
As anti-immigrant sentiment spread through California and the wider US around the turn of the century, a number of laws were passed that fanned discrimination against Asian people. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was just the start. In 1910, a facility opened on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay where many Asian immigrants (like the ones pictured arriving here around 1911) were interrogated and detained, often for long periods.
Catalina Island, located off the coast of Los Angeles, started to gain tourist infrastructure at the end of the 1880s, after ranchers spent two decades using it to graze livestock. The first stagecoach tours of the island’s interior launched in 1894, while Catalina’s first cross-channel steamship, the SS Cabrillo, took its maiden voyage in 1904. In this image from around 1915, crowds of passengers can be seen queuing at the steamship ticket office in the island’s main town, Avalon.
The University of California was founded in 1868, with Berkeley chosen as its main campus in 1873. This image catches students during a martial arts class in the campus grounds. The campanile in the background is Sather Tower, the third tallest clock and bell tower in the world today, which can be seen from several miles away. An observation platform at the top of the campanile boasts views that stretch across the Bay Area. We don't know exactly when this photo was taken, but we do know that Sather Tower was completed in 1914 and Berkeley started offering martial arts classes in 1915.
After staunchly sticking to a non-intervention policy for much of the First World War, America overwhelmingly voted to declare war on Germany in April 1917. At the time, the US Army had fewer than 150,000 officers and soldiers. But the draft was then reintroduced for the first time since the Civil War and more than four million men had served in the armed forces by the war's end. This photo from 1918 shows a soldier at Camp Kearny in San Diego testing out the efficacy of his gas mask – by wearing it to peel onions.
Now check out these extraordinary images which reveal what the world looked like in the 19th century