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18 2 0 1 7 T R A V E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A A Home for Immigrants and Entrepreneurs Innovation and starting fresh are embedded in California's cultural DNA BY DAVID ARMSTRONG The Spanish Franciscan friar blessing an adobe church at Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá in 1769; the Chilean miner trying his luck panning for gold in a cold Sierra cataract in 1849; the Chinese laborer crossing the heaving Pacific to work on the transcontinental railroad in 1869; the African American leaving the South to build warships on the Oakland waterfront in 1942; the Haight-Ashbury hippie with her wakeful dreaming in San Francisco's Summer of Love in 1967; the Indian engi- neer launching a high-tech startup in Palo Alto in 2017, all have something in common: starting over. The United States is said to be a place where the world comes to begin again—to reinvent itself, in the current coinage. If so, California is the "America" of America. This was so even in pre-history, when the first migrants from Asia crossed the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, hung a right, walked southward, found pastures of plenty, rich marine life and heart-stop- pingly beautiful mountains and either decided to keep walking or stop right where they were. The place wasn't called California then, of course. That came later, the name taken from a 16 th -century Spanish novel and used by explorers, soldiers and missionaries, who were themselves starting over in the New World. The Spanish built 21 Roman Catholic missions, from San Diego in the south to Sonoma in the north, from 1769 to 1823. In converting native communities to BJUL/SHUTTERSTOCK . OPPOSITE: SERGEY NOVIKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK ; WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; MARIUSZ S. JURGIELEWICZ/SHUTTERSTOCK ; MEUNIERD/SHUTTERSTOCK THE GOLD RUSH The California Gold Rush (1848-1855) brought a tide of people to the state and turned the sleepy hamlet of San Francisco into an "instant city." Later, in 1859, miners discovered gold in Mono County east of the Sierra Nevada, where the town of Bodie swelled to 10,000 people in 1880. The mill and houses in Bodie State Historic Park, above, date to 1861. Today, Bodie is a well-preserved ghost town. HISTORY