{"id":385303,"date":"2026-07-03T19:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/385303\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:53:12","slug":"ca-joined-the-union-decades-after-1776-heres-what-it-looked-like-before-it-became-a-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/385303\/","title":{"rendered":"CA joined the union decades after 1776. Here\u2019s what it looked like before it became a state"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angelenos are getting ready to celebrate the 250th Independence Day across the city. <\/a>But did you know California didn\u2019t join the U.S. until 74 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed?<\/p>\n

This week, Steven Hackel, a history professor at U.C. Riverside who specializes in early America, joined LAist\u2019s AirTalk with Larry Mantle to discuss what our state was like at that time.<\/p>\n

He said in 1776, California was one of the most densely settled regions in the Western Hemisphere. The state was populated with over 100 different tribal nations speaking a wide range of languages, according to Hackel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWherever there was land \u2014 and animals and plants \u2014 people were living,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n

If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n

A complex economy was already common in Indigenous communities. He characterized it as a two-tiered system: communities relied on resources in their immediate area for survival, and participated in a \u201ctremendous\u201d exchange of goods, including spices and obsidian.<\/p>\n

Spanish colonial influence was still \u201cfairly light \u2026 but changes were afoot,\u201d according to Hackel.<\/p>\n

Most Indigenous communities remained in their ancestral villages, although missions across the state were growing. For the Indigenous people forcibly brought to the missions, the rebellions were \u201calmost immediate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

California also wasn\u2019t entirely cut off from the rebellion on the East Coast. When Spain joined France to support the colonies against England, California missions paid a tax to fund the Spanish military\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

Though it wasn\u2019t yet part of the union, Hackel said that with their in-state rebellions and financial support of the colonies, our state was \u201cintegrated into this larger age of revolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The ruins of Mission San Gabriel Arc\u00e1ngel, which was built from 1791 to 1805. The mission is often referred to as the “Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles”.<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy of The Los Angeles Public Library<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s biodiversity has also evolved since 1776. Miguel Orde\u00f1ana, a community science manager at the L.A. County Natural History Museum, said our region had a \u201cvibrant, lush, thriving landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was home to grizzly bears and other types of migratory birds and steelhead trout, according to Orde\u00f1ana<\/p>\n

Spanish colonizers were afraid of some of those animals, he said, and paid for bounties on animals like wolves, bears, coyotes and mountain lions.<\/p>\n

But long before the Spanish arrival, Orde\u00f1ana noted that Indigenous communities had coexisted with those animals for centuries before.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the full conversation:<\/p>\n

SoCal History: What did Southern California look like 250 years ago? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angelenos are getting ready to celebrate the 250th Independence Day across the city. But did you know California…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[55389,418,118909,48,52,51,47,50,49,15193],"class_list":["post-385303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-55389","tag-history","tag-independence-day","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-socal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}