This is a place for lesser known historical facts and happenings from California. Some of these may relate to things and places that you might know from current/recent times.

This is slightly different from my California Trivia page, which focuses on the “firsts” and the “bests” in California history. It is also different than my collection of oddities in California history.

An elite group of soldiers from Catalonia, the Catalan Volunteers, helped to found early European settlements in California starting in 1769.

Two of the most populous cities in the western United States, San Jose (founded in 1777) and Los Angeles (1781) began as pueblos during Spanish rule in California. Pueblos were secular townships that offered a safe place to live for settlers on the edge of the Spanish empire.

For two years (1905-1907), water from the mighty Colorado river flowed out of control into the Imperial Valley, creating what is known today as the Salton Sea. Higher than expected spring run off overpowered channels meant to siphon off river water for farming. It took the sophisticated engineering power of the Southern Pacific railroad company to get the river back to its normal course.