• Queen Calafia was a mythical black Amazonian leader from an island named California located on the right hand of the West Indies. She was described as a large beautiful person, fertile, of strong limb and of great courage.

• Hernan Cortes would name this new found land north of Mexico after this mythical island.

• Numerous fault lines means numerous earthquakes.

• 1857 Tejon Pass • 1872 Owens Valley • 1906 San Francisco • 1933 Long Beach • 1971 San Fernando Valley • 1989 San Francisco Bay area • 1994 San Fernando Valley

• Ishi, the last of the Yana people in California. He emerged from the forest in August 1911 and was the last native peoples to survive in aboriginal circumstances.

• Sam Brannan was a business man developing San Francisco and had brought in, with the Ship Brooklyn, 224 Mormon immigrants July 31, 1846 .

•  January 24, 1848: James W. Marshall was building a sawmill at the South Fork on the American River when he discovered Gold. • $594 million in Gold ingots ($10 billion in 2001 prices) would be taken out in a 10 year period.

Charles C. Nahl was a German painter who captured the first prospectors of the California Gold Rush in oils.

• May 1903, John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt standing on Glacier Point- Yosemite, California. • The two had camped out for 4 days thus creating the Nation Park system.

• August 1883: John and James Montgomery would build a glider from wood and fabric weighing 38 pounds. John, pulled by James, would fly 600 feet and land safely.

John Montgomery 1905

• 1880 Lester Pelton would invent and patent one of the greatest mechanical inventions of our time called the Pelton turbine which led to hydro-electricity.