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This article is about the Californian state ethos. For the professional tennis team, see California Dream (tennis). For the 1960s artistic movement, see California sound.

This advertisement promotes clipper ship passage from Hoboken, New Jersey to San Francisco, California. It depicts gold miners hard at work - one of them waves at a clipper ship as it sails past them.

The California Dream is the belief in one's capacity to gain wealth or fame in a new land, namely the American state of California. Within California, the Dream has been used to evoke the concept of a state-wide ethos and purpose, especially in relation to the broader concept of the American Dream. California's history, location, and diverse economy have contributed to the Dream. Diverse perspectives have led to its use in rhetoric to both promote California and to criticize the policies of the state government in Sacramento.

Some argue that, as a result of the California gold rush after 1849, California's name became indelibly connected with image of an average man travelling to strike rich mining gold. According to this theory, the belief in rapid success after moving to a new area became known as the "California Dream".[1] Others claim the concept did not emerge until the 1960s.[2] Regardless of its specific origins, California came to be perceived as a place of new beginnings, where hard work and good luck would be rewarded by fame and fortune. California came to be seen as a lucky place, a land of opportunity and wealth. It was and is a powerful belief, as it draws from many of the state's accomplishments and promotes a sense of unity in the state's residents. Strong emotions tend to be raised when the Dream is threatened.[3]

Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation:

The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard" . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream . . . became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill.[4]

Overnight, California gained the international reputation as "The Golden State". In 1968, this became California's official nickname.[5]

Migrants

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Generations of immigrants have been attracted by the California Dream. Farmers,[6] oil drillers,[7] filmmakers,[8] aerospace corporations [9] and tech entrepreneurs have each had economic booms in California after the Gold Rush had ended.

Part of the "California Dream" was "that every family could have its own private home."[10][11]

As historian Kevin Starr has pointed out, for many if not most migrants to the "Golden State", reality did not reflect the ideals of the California Dream.[12] The Okies of the 1930s migrated to California to escape the ecological devastation of the Dust Bowl, and despite their California Dream, were faced with poverty, even on the West Coast, according to Walter Stein.[13] Claudia Jurmain, in her 1986 book, "California: a place, a people, a dream", claims that the California Dream was a "a love affair with an idea, a marriage to a myth."[14]

Psychology

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Observers often report that people are happier in California. Often cited is the commonly pleasant and warm Californian climate, in fact Californians will often report higher satisfaction with their climate than American in the Midwest,[15] with much of California enjoying a Mediterranean climate. A 1998 survey of students suggested that self-reported overall life satisfaction of those who lived in California was not significantly higher than those who lived elsewhere.[16]

20th century

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Historian Kevin Starr in his seven-volume history of the state has explored in great depth the "California Dream"—the realization by ordinary Californians of the American Dream. Beginning in the late 19th century, California promised the highest possible standard of life for the middle class, and indeed for skilled blue collar workers and farm owners. Poverty existed, but was concentrated in camps of migrant farm workers, as made famous in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, where the Joad family, driven out of Oklahoma by the Dust Bowl, searches in vain for the California Dream in the southern Central Valley.

By the 1950s, "Okies" and "Arkies" (migrants from Oklahoma and Arkansas) were achieving the dream. The American upper class preferred to live in New York and Boston. The California Dream meant an improved and more affordable family life: a small but stylish and airy house marked by a fluidity of indoor and outdoor space, such as the ubiquitous California bungalow with a lush backyard. It meant many good jobs, excellent roads, plentiful facilities for outdoor recreation, and schools and universities that had achieved worldwide acclaim by the 1940s.

James M. Cain, an eastern writer who visited California, reported in 1933 that the archetypal Californian "addresses you in easy grammar, completes his sentences, shows familiarity with good manners, and in addition gives you a pleasant smile."[17]

Cultural phenomena which have fed into the California Dream include the rise of the film industry in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, California's aerospace industry, the California wine industry and the Dotcom boom. The phrase has been used to describe Californians' struggles to find a suitable location in the state to achieve success, in 2017, when the cost of living in places like the San Francisco Bay Area were prohibitive.[18]

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1907 sheet music for Glorious Southern California

The term has been referenced in numerous media, most notably in the 1963 song "California Dreamin'". The song is written from the perspective of a Californian who longs to return to the warmth and safety of their home state while spending the winter out of state. The most popular version of the song was released as a single by The Mamas & the Papas in 1965.

"California dreaming" has been used in books, films, and other pieces of art that reference some aspect of the California Dream, such as the 2007 film California Dreaming, and the 2005 UK reality TV series California Dreaming. Lawrence Donegan's California Dreaming: A Smooth-running, Low-mileage, Cut-price American Adventure references the California and American Dreams. Poet Christopher Buckley referenced it in Sleepwalk: California dreamin' and a last dance with the '60s. Numerous songs have been written about the California Dream.[19]

The ubiquity of the song "California Dreamin'" as a Californian cultural signifier has been used to evoke an emotional connection to the state and people of California. For the 2015 film San Andreas, singer songwriter Sia recorded an orchestral version that was used during a montage as a massive earthquake destroys many landmarks across California, transforming the song into a lament about grief and catastrophe.[20]

See also

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Further reading

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See also: Bibliography of California history
  • Brands, H.W. The age of gold: the California Gold Rush and the new American dream (2003). ISBN 978-0-385-72088-5.
  • Davie, Michael. California: The Vanishing Dream (1973)
  • Matthews, Glenna. Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century (2002)
  • Schkade, David A., and Daniel Kahneman. "Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction," Psychological Science, September 1998 vol. 9, # 5, pp. 340–46 doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00066online version Archived June 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  • Starr, Kevin.
    • Starr, Kevin California: A History (2005), a synthesis in 370 pp.
    • Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (1973)
    • Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (1986)
    • Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (1991), cultural, social and political history excerpt and text search
    • Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (1997) excerpt and text search
    • The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (1997)
    • Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950 (2003), excerpt and text search
    • Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963 (2009) excerpt and text search
    • Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003. (2004). 784 pp.

References

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  1. ^ Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (1986)
  2. ^ Warren, Louis S. (May 1, 2023). "The California DreamHistory of a Myth". Pacific Historical Review. 92 (2): 260–298. doi:10.1525/phr.2023.92.2.260. ISSN 0030-8684. S2CID 258624023.
  3. ^ Starr, Americans and the California Dream and Starr, Inventing the Dream (1985)
  4. ^ Brands, 2003), p. 442.
  5. ^ Robert A. Burchell, "The Loss of a Reputation; or, The Image of California in Britain before 1875," California Historical Quarterly 53 (Summer I974): 115–30, shows that stories about Gold Rush lawlessness deterred immigration for two decades.
  6. ^ Starr, 2005), p. 110.
  7. ^ See, e.g., Signal Hill, California, Bakersfield, California; Los Angeles, California
  8. ^ Leading studios include 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists
  9. ^ Such as Hughes Aircraft, Douglas Aircraft, North American Aviation, Northrop, and Lockheed Aircraft.
  10. ^ Warren A. Beck, David A. Williams, California: a history of the Golden State (1972) p. 487
  11. ^ Elisabeth Orr, "Joy Neugebauer Purchasing the California Dream in Postwar Suburbia," ch 12 in The human tradition in California ed. by Clark Davis, David Igler (2002)
  12. ^ Starr (1985) p. viii
  13. ^ Walter Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (1973) p. 26
  14. ^ Claudia K. Jurmain, California: a place, a people, a dream (1986) p. 141
  15. ^ Schkade, David A.; Kahneman, Daniel (September 1998). "Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction". Psychological Science. 9 (5): 340–346. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00066. ISSN 0956-7976.
  16. ^ Schkade and Kahneman. "Does Living in California Make People Happy?" (1998)
  17. ^ Starr, Kevin (2009). Golden Dreams : California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-992430-1. OCLC 778339550.
  18. ^ "Bay Area residents seek the California dream — in Sacramento". November 18, 2017.
  19. ^ "Sheet music is the soundtrack of the California dream". Los Angeles Times. May 29, 2013.
  20. ^ "Listen To Sia's Cover Of "California Dreamin" By The Mamas & The Papas". Nylon. May 12, 2015. Retrieved February 11, 2025.
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