Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/119

 CHRONOLOGY 93 was received December 5, 1848. The following year about 100,000 immigrants reached California from the east. A few years later the American population had increased to 300,000. San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville and Stockton were the supply depots for the army of miners. California's first Constitutional Congress con- vened at Monterey in 1849. In 1850, on Sep- tember 9th, the territory was admitted as a State and Fremont became one of its senators. Sacra- mento was made the State capital in 1854. The extraordinary conditions of California life resulted in riots and abuse of the laws, which the Vigilance Committees of San Francisco and other towns were able to control only by confronting the desperadoes with their own methods. In 1860 began the Silver Era which disseminated vast wealth within the boundaries of the State and made possible its agricultural and industrial de- velopment. The first California railroad, the Central Pacific, S was completed in 1869, trans-continental com- munication being established when its rails me those of the Union Pacific at Promontory, near Ogden, Utah. A few years later San Francisco and Los Angeles were joined by a railway. Important State legislation led to the adoption of a new constitution in 1879 which broadly af-