| Alta California | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1804–1821) Province of the First Mexican Empire (1821–1824) Federal Territory of Mexico (1824–1836) | |||||||||
| 1804–1836 | |||||||||
.svg) | |||||||||
| Capital | Monterey (1804–1836) | ||||||||
| Demonym | Californio | ||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| Governor | |||||||||
• 1804–1814 | José Joaquín de Arrillaga (First Spanish governor) | ||||||||
• 1815–1822 | Pablo Vicente de Solá (Last Spanish governor) | ||||||||
• 1822–1825 | Luis Antonio Argüello (First Mexican governor) | ||||||||
• 1836 | Nicolás Gutiérrez (Last Alta California governor) | ||||||||
| Historical era | Spanish colonial era | ||||||||
| 1769 | |||||||||
• Established | 1804 | ||||||||
| August 24, 1821 | |||||||||
• Disestablished | 1836 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | United States | ||||||||
Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as Nueva California ('New California') among other names,[a] was a province of New Spain formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of Las Californias, but was made a separate province in 1804 (named Nueva California).[1] Following the Mexican War of Independence, it became a territory of Mexico in April 1822[2] and was renamed Alta California in 1824.
The territory included all of the present-day U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado. The territory was re-combined with Baja California (as a single departamento) in Mexico's 1836 Siete Leyes (Seven Laws) constitutional reform, granting it more autonomy.[3][4] That change was undone in 1846, but rendered moot by the outcome of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when most of the areas formerly comprising Alta California were ceded to the U.S. in the treaty which ended the war. In 1850, California joined the union as the 31st state.
The El Camino Real trail established by the Spanish extended from Mexico City west to Santa Fe, and California, as well as east to Florida. To the southeast, beyond the deserts and the Colorado River, lay the Spanish settlements in Arizona.[b][c] Spanish soldiers, settlers, and missionaries invaded the homelands of the Indigenous peoples of California, people of the Great Basin, and the Pueblo peoples in the establishment of Alta California.[7]
Evidence of Alta California remains in the numerous Spanish place names of American cities such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Ana, and Santa Rosa.
- ^ a b Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1884). History of California. The History company. p. 68.
without any uniformity of usage, the upper country began to be known as California Septentrional, California del Norte, Nueva California, or California Superior. But gradually Alta California became more common than the others, both in private and official communications, though from the date of the separation of the provinces in 1804, Nueva California became the legal name, as did Alta California after 1824.
- ^ Williams, Mary Floyd (July 1922). "Mission, presidio and pueblo: Notes on California local institutions under Spain and Mexico". California Historical Society Quarterly. 1 (1): 23–35. doi:10.2307/25613566. JSTOR 25613566. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Robinson79was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Yenne, Bill (2004). The Missions of California. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press. pp. 18f. ISBN 1592233198.
- ^ A Description of California in 1828 by José Bandini (Berkeley, Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1951), 3. Reprinted in Mexican California (New York, Arno Press, 1976). ISBN 0-405-09538-4
- ^ Chapman, Charles Edward (1973) [1916]. The Founding of Spanish California: The Northwestward Expansion of New Spain, 1687–1783. New York: Octagon Books. pp. xiii.
- ^ Forging communities in colonial Alta California. Kathleen L. Hull, John G. Douglass. Tucson. 2018. pp. 12–18. ISBN 978-0-8165-3892-8. OCLC 1048786636.
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