"There is no country, in the known world, possessing a soil so fertile and productive...and a climate of mildness...nor is there a country...which is so eminently calculated by nature herself...to promote the unbounded happiness and prosperity, of civilized and enlightened man." Lansford W. Hastings, Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, 1845

California had been a Mexican province called Alta California (Upper California) since Mexico's won its independence from Spain in 1821. When the Gold Rush began, the United States had just seized and occupied the region. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, ended hostilities between Mexico and the United States, which paid $15,000,000 for Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. Colonel Richard B. Mason was appointed military governor of California, but until the Gold Rush, no one was in a hurry to admit California as a state to the Union.