The Millennium Experience

California has always been a place where initiative—as opposed to class, family, or other connections—is honored above all else. The state has lured assertive types who metaphorically or otherwise have come seeking “gold”—in the Sacramento foothills, in Hollywood, and, more recently, in the Silicon Valley. To be sure, not everyone achieves the mythical California dream, but neither is it totally an illusion. The sense of infinite possibility, as much a by-product of the state’s varied and striking land forms as media hype, is what most tourists notice on their first trip. It’s why so many return—sometimes forever.

Coastal California began its migration from somewhere far to the south millions of years ago. It’s still moving north along the San Andreas Fault, but you have plenty of time for a visit before Santa Monica hits the Arctic Circle. If you’ve heard predictions that some of the state may fall into the Pacific, take the long view and consider that much of California has been in and out of the ocean throughout its history. The forces that raised its mountains and formed the Central Valley are still at work.

Upheaval has always been a fact of life in California—below ground and above. Floods, earthquakes, racial strife, immigration woes, high unemployment, and Orange County’s scandal-ridden bankruptcy are but a few of the high-profile traumas—not to mention the O.J. Simpson murder case—that have tarnished California’s image in recent years. Things got so bad in the early 1990s that U-Haul declared a shortage of rental trucks because so many residents were moving out of the Golden State. This was fine with the many natives whose “Welcome to California: Now Go Home” bumper stickers had greeted new arrivals for several decades—few states have grown as rapidly as California, which had a population of about 7 million as World War II came to a close and now is home to 32 million people.

From the outside looking in, it may have seemed that, along with its AAA bond rating, California had lost its appeal as a travel destination. But even before its stunning mid-1990s economic turnaround, the Golden State had too many “positives” to be written off: dramatic coastline; rugged desert and mountain regions; Hollywood glitz and Palm Springs glamour; a potpourri of Pacific Rim, European, and Latin American influences; and a fabled history as a conduit for fame and fortune, hope and renewal.

More so than most of its residents are willing to admit, California is a land of contradictions, where “reality” is a matter of opinion—which is why the cinema, an enterprise based wholly on the manipulation of reality, is the perfect signature industry for the state. Take for instance two volumes in many local libraries about the historic chain of 21 California missions established by Spanish Catholic priests, most notably Father Junípero Serra. One book is titled California’s Missions: Their Romance and Beauty. Its author details Serra’s strategy “to convert and civilize the Indians” who resided in late–18th-century California. The other tome, The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide, disputes the contentions of “mission apologists” and illustrates how on levels physical and spiritual the mission system “was the first disaster for the Indian population of California” (the second being the gold rush of the mid-1800s).

The truth? It’s likely somewhere in between, though recent scholarship has tended to show Serra and other missionaries in a less than favorable light. The treatment of other groups—from the Chinese who came to mine and build the railroads to Mexican farm workers—has been equally problematic through the years. The scapegoating of “foreigners”—often by first-generation Californians with no sense of the irony of their protestations—is a cyclical blot on the state’s conscience.

California’s move to the forefront of the controversy regarding affirmative action gave many people the impression that its residents wish only to roll back the clock. Undoubtedly, some do, but the circumstances here are more complex than they appear on the surface because the state has a more diverse population than most others in the Union. Many Asian Americans, for instance, supported the decision by the regents of the University of California to end the institution’s affirmative-action program, arguing that it unfairly denied admittance to highly qualified Asian-American students. Parties on all sides of the affirmative-action issue were given pause, though, when statistics released in 1998 showed that minority enrollment had declined significantly at some key campuses—something the regents had asserted was not likely to happen. In any case, as with the “taxpayer revolts” of the 1970s and 1980s, the immigration debate, managed health care, and government by ballot initiative, the state’s residents have forced discussion of an issue that citizens elsewhere have brooded over but not confronted.

California is a restless nirvana. The sun shines and all is beautiful; then the earth shakes and all is shattered. It’s time to rebuild. And the state bounces back—San Francisco from the 1906 and 1989 quakes, Los Angeles from ones in 1971 and 1994, much of the state from incredible flooding in 1997 and the El Niño–induced storms of 1998. Billions were made during the Cold War defense boom; then communism collapsed, bases closed, and unemployment skyrocketed. It was time to diversify. And the state did, making overtures to Asia and Latin America.

And to tourists, who find that although California isn’t perfect—what place is?—it’s a source of endless diversion, natural and man-made. “Wow!” is a word one hears often here—at Half Dome in Yosemite, during the simulated earthquake at Universal Studios, driving through the Mojave Desert, or walking among the redwoods of Humboldt County. If Texans like things “big” and New Yorkers like a little style, what delights Californians most is drama—indoors or out.

There is no way to take in this “show” in one trip, so don’t try. Seventy-five percent of California’s visitors return at least once, an impressive quotient of satisfied customers. As you travel through California’s various regions you will get a sense of the great diversity of cultures, the ongoing pull between preservation and development, and the state’s unique place in the landscapes of geography and the imagination.