May 26, 1895: Dorothea Lange is born.

Dorothea Lange was a prominent American photographer who worked most extensively through the Great Depression, during which she photographed the unemployed and homeless for the Resettlement Administration, and later the Farm Security Administration. One of her most famous photographs - “Migrant Mother” (actually one in a series of photographs) - is one of the most iconic of that era.

During World War II, Lange was assigned by the War Relocation Authority to cover the rounding up and internment of Japanese-American - in fact, if you see a photograph of that event, it’s likely a Dorothea Lange piece. Dozens of her photographs, especially those that portrayed conditions within the camps, were impounded and censored by the U.S. government. 

Though she was a native of New Jersey, Lange spent a substantial amount of her career working in California, and in 2008, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, stating that “her passion for people and the art of photography left us with era-defining images of 20th century America.”

April 18, 1906: An earthquake strikes San Francisco.

The earthquake is estimated to have had a magnitude of about 7.9 M_W , with the epicenter occurring around two miles from San Francisco; this alone would have been enough to devastate the city, but the fires that followed are said to have caused even more destruction than the quake itself.

Some 25,000 buildings were destroyed by dozens of fires that soon overwhelmed the ill-prepared San Francisco Fire Department. The original Palace Hotel, once the largest hotel in the West, was destroyed by one of these fires; another (mostly sentimental) loss was that of the original “California Republic” flag used in the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt. Although the city was more or less quick to recover, the earthquake and fire displaced over half of San Francisco’s 400,000 residents, and together, the twin disasters caused around $8.2 billion worth of damage (in today’s money).

Yet, at the same time, the earthquake proved a valuable resource for scientists in the growing field of seismology. By 1915, San Francisco had more or less been rebuilt from literal ashes, and rather splendidly, too - the scenic Pacific Heights neighborhood, a more modern Chinatown, and redesigned streets and subways all emerged after the disaster. One year following the earthquake, a reflection upon the event appeared in the Coast Seamen’s Journal, dated “Year I, A.E.” An excerpt:

Energy and courage have restored San Francisco; the very immutable fates will preserve it. No disaster can destroy or minimize the importance of the gateway between the East and the West… 

The joining of the East and West has come, and the outstretched arms of both reach through the Golden Gate. You can not set a city at the focus of all the streams of the world’s activity, and keep it small or unimportant. The greatness of San Francisco is as certain, under the conditions of the twentieth century, as was that of Constantinople under the Byzantine Empire.

February 27, 1902: John Steinbeck is born in Salinas, California.

A California native, a mustache-wearer, a German-American, an Episcopalian, a lover of history and culture, and a (Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning) author (obviously) - in other words, a man after my own heart.

Steinbeck was of the same age as the Lost Generation - of authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (who he greatly admired), but his career only really took off in the 1930s with his 1937 novella Of Mice and Men. It was the second in his “Dust Bowl trilogy”, which also included 1936’s In Dubious Battle and 1939’s The Grapes of Wrath, the book that would win him his Pulitzer. Born and raised in California, many of Steinbeck’s stories took place in or around Monterey and the Central Valley, including the Dust Bowl books, East of Eden, Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, and Tortilla Flat. 

In 1962, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech, he described the duty of the writer in this way:

“… the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”

He died of heart disease in 1968.

John C. Frémont (January 21, 1813 - July 13, 1890).

Like Hamilton, Frémont was a (literal) bastard. He was also a bit of an actual bastard and in general not very nice, but he was certainly a very interesting character. Despite his many personal flaws, Frémont was, as Californians are wont to be, fairly badass. He holds the distinction of being the first Republican presidential nominee, running under the slogan “Free soil, free silver, free men, Frémont”; he was also a distinguished explorer (“the Great Pathfinder”), army officer, and military governor of California (which he helped acquire during the Mexican-American War). In all parts of his career, he inspired controversy and conflict. Today, native (northern) Californians know him best as the namesake of one of their cities, and also a school district.