California Admission Day

Happy California Admission Day! Not much celebrated anymore, but an important date in California history. It’s strange to think that on September 9, 1850, as President Fillmore put his signature on the document that admitted California to the Union, the people of California had no way of knowing that they had just become a state. No telephone, no telegraph, not even the Pony Express to spread the news. It would take five weeks for the news to reach San Francisco.

In September 1889 — 39 years after the event — John Bidwell wrote to his friend E. Nelson Blake:

Your memory is good — true, 39 years ago we brought the news of California’s admission into the Union. Where are those who were our fellow passengers? Except for yourself, I cannot recall the name of one living! We ought to be thankful that our lives have been spared to behold the wonderful march of events of this prolific age!

Bidwell and Blake were both passengers on the steamship Oregon, arriving on October 18, 1850 with the news that California had become the 31st state. Bidwell was traveling in a first class cabin, while Blake, a farm boy on his way to the goldfields, was in steerage.

Bidwell carried with him the statehood documents, but fearing their loss to unknown men who opposed the admission of California as a free state, he gave the document into the keeping of Mrs. Elisha Crosby and her daughter Helen. Miss Helen slept with the packet of papers under her pillow and hid them in her blue silk umbrella as the crossed the Isthmus of Panama. For more on this story, see “Miss Crosby’s Blue Umbrella.”

Bidwell himself never said much about his role in bringing California into the Union. But he reported that the other states (at least the Northern ones) celebrated the event almost as much as Californians themselves.

The citizens of California were well prepared to become a state. Never a territory, they had organized themselves in 1849 with a Constitutional Convention. They had passed a code of laws and elected two U.S. senators (William Gwin and John C. Fremont) who were ready to take their seats as soon as statehood became official. The newspapers trumpeted the glad tidings.