6.4: Cultural Expression

Though Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and most other literary figures of the Gold Rush era had left California by 1870, a new group of writers had emerged by 1900. One was María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the state’s first published Latina author, whose novel The Squatter and the Don (1885) was based, as its subtitle proclaimed, on “contemporary occurrences in California.” In her novel, Ruiz de Burton presented a romance set against the conflict between an aristocratic Californio rancho owner and settlers squatting on his lands, and then against the conflict between them and the railroad.

By using contemporary social and economic conflict as the context for her novel, Ruiz de Burton anticipated the work of Frank Norris, the best known of California’s new authors. While at Berkeley, Norris discovered the French novelist Emile Zola, with his realistic treatment of contemporary life, especially among the working class, and Norris began to see the people as the stuff for powerful fiction. Of Norris’s six novels, McTeague (1899), The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903) are the most well known. He died suddenly in 1902. The Octopus, first book of a projected trilogy focused on California wheat, dealt with conflict between wheat growers and the railroad—“the Octopus” was a thinly disguised version of the SP. In The Pit, Norris shifted to Chicago, to treat financial manipulations in the wholesale buying and selling of wheat. He died before he could write the final novel in the trilogy, The Wolf, which was to have been set in Europe, where the wheat that had been produced amidst conflict between railroad and farmers, and that had been bought and sold amidst financial machinations, finally became bread that saved lives during famine.

California also provided the setting for one of the most popular novels of the day, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884). Jackson was an activist in the movement to change federal policy toward Indians, and Ramona was an effort to mold public opinion. Setting Ramona in southern California in the 1850s, Jackson used romance as the vehicle to depict the mistreatment of Indians. An instant success, Ramona had some influence on federal policies, but its romanticized image of southern California had a greater effect in promoting tourism.

Henry George, a San Francisco journalist, also sought to influence politics. George analyzed the rapid growth and industrialization of California in Progress and Poverty (1879), the best known of several works in which he studied the urban, industrial society of his day. George argued that “progress” (economic growth and development) inevitably brought greater poverty, something he attributed to land speculation and land monopolization. He proposed, as the solution, a single tax on the increase in the value of land, which he hoped would create such a tax burden on large landholders as to force them to break up their holdings.

Others also took inspiration from California itself. In his late twenties, John Muir set out to witness nature. His travels took him to Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada, and the beauty of that magnificent landscape moved him deeply. “Born again!” he wrote in his journal. For the rest of his long life, he roamed the Sierras in the summers and spent his winters describing their grandeur in magazine articles and books. His writings helped to make many Americans more aware of the importance of preserving wilderness. In 1892, he became the first president of the Sierra Club. He was an important advocate for the National Park Bill that passed in Congress in 1899, and that, among other things, created Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. He is considered today to be one of the founders of environmental activism.

The Sierra Nevada also inspired William Keith, who by 1900 was perhaps the most famous painter in California. His sometimes ethereal paintings of California scenes were popular on both coasts. Carleton Watkins also took inspiration from the California landscape, but his medium was the new one of photography. Considered by many as the most important American photographer of the 19th century, Watkins took photographs of Yosemite that made him—and Yosemite—famous, but his work over nearly a half century included many photographs of urban and farm life as well.

For the first six months of 1894, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park became the site of the California Midwinter International Exposition, one of the era’s many celebrations of progress, technology, and culture. The exposition was also intended to proclaim to the world not only that the city and state had attained a high technological and cultural level, but that tourists could bask in California sunshine when their own cities were beset by snow and ice. Great exhibit halls demonstrated accomplishments in manufacturing, liberal arts, fine arts, mechanical arts, and agriculture and horticulture. Electrical lights were strung everywhere in dazzling celebration of that new technology. The fair succeeded, attracting visitors from around the nation and launching San Francisco’s reputation as a favorite destination for tourists.