From the KCET post:
"In 1826, American fur trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith blazed a trail from present-day Utah to the Mojave Desert. After a clash with hostile Mohave Indians, Smith met two Tongva guides who offered to take his expedition to Mission San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. The guides led Smith along the intermittent Mohave River and over the San Bernardino Mountains near the Cajon Pass. Smith's party arrived at the mission on November 27, where they were warmly received by the missionaries...
Three years later, Santa Fe merchant Antonio Armijo led the first successful caravan from Santa Fe to Southern California, combining Smith's route with portions of the Franciscans' 1776 path to Utah to open what would later be called the Old Spanish Trail. In doing so, Armijo had established an important link between California and New Mexico, now the northern flanks of the newly-independent Mexican Republic."
Read more at the blog.
"In California the happy New Year comes without the wishing. Balmy air, golden sunshine, refreshing showers, pleasant odors, verdant landscape, and attractive blossoms, charm the eye and please the senses, leaving no yearning for a happier New Year, if the physician is absorbed in his calling, for he will be deriving sufficient pleasure from its study to supply all other lackings."
"A California Christmas is all good. The earth rejoices, the skies give thanks and are glad. We do not have to be happy between shivers, nor imprison ourselves lest Nature slay us. All is joyous together. The rains have come, and with them the Resurrection. There are new heavens and a new earth; a turquoise arch above an emerald floor. The birds can keep Christmas, too--and a winter which even a goose has too much sense to inhabit is not fit for christians.
"I will give you a little story of two Christmas days in Los Angeles. One the first of these Christmas days, I have reason to believe, was held the first Christmas tree ever prepared in Southern California. In 1857 Los Angeles could boast of but a limited residence section. The plaza formed the center of the city. North of it were the adobe homes of the native Californian population, while south of it were the few business houses of that date and the homes of the American residents. Los Angeles street marked the eastern boundary, and beyond large vineyards and orchards extended toward the Los Angeles river. First street, open only to Main, marked the southern limit of population, except, perhaps, a few homes just the other side of it.
"A thick haze veiled the horizon and rendered the sunset less pleasing than we had expected to find it. A hurried walk of an hour in the twilight brought us to a small mining camp called Whiskey Diggings where we found good accommodations for the night, and to our surprise, found it a very quiet, sober place in spite of its suggestive name. I learned that the peculiar name of the camp originated as follows: Three Irishmen went there two or three years before from an adjacent mining camp to prospect, taking a bottle of whiskey with them, and returned drunk and reported that they had discovered not gold but "whiskey diggings," and the place was ever afterward called by that name."
"We stopped for a night at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Yount. This old man had led an adventurous and chequered life, in the course of which he had fought under Jackson at New Orleans, and in the Seminole war, had been taken prisoner by the Indians, and actually bound to the stake. He had been a hunter and trapper, and Indian fighter at large, in the heart of the continent, until his combative propensities were gratified--and he finally found himself one day at the "jumping-off place," and made his first attempt at ocean navigation on the bosom of the broad Pacific. In the unpretending skiff of an otter-hunter, often unaccompanied save by his trusty rifle, he coasted the shores and islands of California, in search of the pelt of his valuable prey. 
"At four PM, on board the "New World" steamer for Sacramento, en route to the mountains. A great crowd on board, smoking and spitting everywhere-one cannot walk in the saloon without kicking over "spittoons" as the receiver is called, the very sight of which invites a discharge from an American mouth. Supper on board--tea, coffee, cakes and bread; a steak at one end of the table, innumerable small dishes up and down the sides, holding--some one meat-chop, some a small fish each, a perch for instance, others contain one slice of ham, others again two baked potatoes, and so on; these dishes are cleared with a very natural rapidity, and the less energetic gentleman must be contented with bread and butter; for this, one dollar and a half is paid."
"The Recorder's Court often affords much amusement to the idle vagabonds who are fortunate enough to avoid its jurisdiction. The following are specimens of cases before the "Honourable" the Recorder, who bears a title in spite of the republican repudiation of such things.
"The farmers have set up a wail here and described the difficulties they have had down in these valleys in establishing homes. The miners themselves, many of them, have sailed clear around the horn, and many of them have been balanced upon the point of a horn ever since, in an honest endeavor all the time to find something that would add to the wealth of the State, and certainly they have succeeded, because I see that during the year eighteen hundred and seventy-seven they have produced nearly nineteen million of dollars; and yet these learned statesmen want to go to work and impose this onerous tax upon the men who are endeavoring to bring this wealth to the surface. It is the only industry to-day in this State which pays to the laboring men three dollars and four dollars a day. In my county the ruling rate is four dollars a day for miners. Now the laboring men cut up so about wages down in San Francisco that they have got the wages down to nothing. The only men who pay them full wages in this State are the miners, and yet the Workingmen stand up here and vote to tax them out of existence, and prevent the organization of companies which will pay them better wages than they can get in any other place."
