“In those days California seemed as remote from the East as the heart of Central Africa.”
- Unknown pioneer
“As each man steps his foot on shore he seems to have entered a magic circle in which he is under the influence of new impulses.”
- The California Adventurer
“As soon as you reach California you will think every one is crazy; and without great caution, you will be crazy yourself.”
- A pioneer, in a letter to a friend
As I walked along the streets, I met a great many persons whom I had known in New York, and they all seemed to be in the highest spirits. Every one in greeting me said, ‘It is a glorious country!’ or ‘Isn’t it a glorious country?’ or ‘Did you ever see a more glorious country?’ In every case the word ‘glorious’ was sure to come out.... I caught the infection, and though I had but a single dollar in my pocket, no business whatever, and did not know where I was to get my next meal, I found myself saying to everybody I met, ‘It is a glorious country!’ The exuberance of my spirits was marvelous.”
- Stephen J. Field, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
“We have the most exhilarating atmosphere in the world. In it a man can do more work than anywhere else, and he feels under a constant pressure of excitement. With a sun like that of Italy, a coast wind as cool as an Atlantic breeze in Spring, an air as crisp and dry as that of the high Alps, people work on without let or relaxation, until the vital cord suddenly snaps. Few Americans die gradually here or of old age; they fall off without warning.”
- a San Francisco paper
“This is the gate to the sea. On this single bay the whole business of the coast must be concentrated. Not merely the metropolis of the Western front of the United States, she will soon be “The City,” the sole great city, relatively such a city as New York, Boston, Portland, Philadelphia, Richmond and Charleston, with many a coast and inland city rolled into one, would be.”
- Henry George
“They seem to be people without any remembered Past save as it may sometimes come to them in a confused sense of having been born in some other place at some vaguely remote period.”
- Ada Clare
“You can form no conception of the state of affairs here. I do believe, in my soul, everybody has gone mad—stark, staring mad.”
- A pioneer
“Every American is eaten up with longing to rise.”
- Alexis de Toqueville