I’m not American so not savvy on American history, I just pick up bits and pieces from TV, pop culture and such, so maybe I’ve just got the wrong impression. But even after reading some Wikipedia pages and other sites I’m still confused.
So you have the American Colonial period starting from way back, until you get the 13 Colonies in the late 1700’s.
Then there’s some expansion along the east coast until you get the “southern” states.
Then it seems like all of a sudden people are trying to get all the way across what is now the Middle and Midwest (?) states to California. Like, even before the Gold Rush (which I know was in the mid 1800’s) people were dead keen to get over there and not stop along the way.
I guess basically I’m wondering why people travelling the Oregon Trail and equivalent paths were crossing over so much “undeveloped” (*!!) land to get to the West Coast, rather than steadily developing towns and cities that would slowly craw across what is now the Continental United States.
California became a state in 1850 but Oklahoma didn’t until 1907, and it just doesn’t make sense to me!
*VERY IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE: I want to be sensitive and respectful and acknowledge that ALL of the land I’m talking about was inhabited and “civilised” by the indigenous people LONG before “Americans” began “developing” it. In fact I’m even aware that not all “Native Americans” were nomadic like some of the “plains Indians” we so often see depicted, that there were whole cities established by indigenous people. I discounted them – perhaps in ignorant error – because they are almost never referred to in the historical documentaries or fictions I’ve been exposed. I would be very happy to learn more about settler/Native relations in the course of responses to this post!
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California is a bit of an oddity when it comes to US history. It was colonized/‘taken from Native Americans’ by the Spanish (not the English or French like the rest of the US), and eventually became part of Mexico when it gained its independence in the early 1800’s. It’s a place that’s very rich in natural resources; bay access, rivers, mining, lumber, fertile ground, and great weather. Those all hold fairly true today, which is part of the reason it has about 1/6 of the population of the US. Anyway, back to history.
The US gained control of it as the result of a war with Mexico that ended in 1848. Simultaneously, bulk gold was discovered in the mountains, creating the Gold Rush. Many of the people on the Oregon Trail were there to participate in that rush (poor souls, the Gold Rush was terrible for workers). Once they got there, they were too poor to go home, so California became their home. Instead of keeping it as a territory, the US gave it statehood after only 2 years in the union. Because it was previously colonized, and growing from the Rush, it had a large enough population that it could be a state. And with the amount of resources, it became rather obvious that it needed to be well integrated at the federal level. So it got a fast track that the desert-filled or less-fertile states didn’t enjoy.
It’s also worth noting that the US is massive. It took so long to populate the later states simply because there was no reason for people to move there. There wasn’t enough people. Existing states still had tons of land. Take a look at Tennessee, not a particularly big state compared to others, but it’s almost 700km long. Even now, some of those states are sparsely populated, as there’s no particular reason to set up industry there when you need a city’s shipping and utilities infrastructure.
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