Currently, scholars hold that the government’s principal contribution to the California wine industry’s recovery from Prohibition in the 1930s was to get out of the way, freeing entrepreneurs to conduct business properly; according to this interpretation, the United States only taxed the product and impeded progress. But this article argues that in the areas of regulation, promotion, and protection of the wine industry, the federal government provided a framework for California winemakers to succeed and that, moreover, it often did so at their request and in cooperation with them. Though New Deal laws and regulations did not benefit all stakeholders equally, they did work to bring economic recovery to an industry that suffered from both Prohibition and the Depression.

In 1923, Los Angeles teachers protested the state’s biennial budget, a controversial document from newly elected governor Friend Richardson that significantly cut funding to government agencies. The budget was the culmination of more than a decade of fiscal policy reform that reflected a significant shift in anti-tax sentiment. The expansion of state governance in the early twentieth century required the development of fiscal policies to meet the needs of the modern state, and public debates about taxation reflected deep ideological differences about the structure and scope of government and implicated public schooling. This analysis demonstrates two features of fiscal policy reform in California. First, tax reform shaped and was shaped by the political context, demonstrating the dynamic relationship between fiscal policy and state formation. Second, debates about tax reform were ultimately about the scope of government. Anti-tax campaigns that sought a more limited government implicated schooling, the largest item in the state budget, and undermined efforts to achieve educational equity.

This article investigates Indigenous persistence within Mission Santa Clara de Asís in central California through the analysis of animal food remains. The Spanish colonial mission system within Alta California had a profound social and ecological impact on Indigenous peoples, altering traditional subsistence strategies and foodway patterns. Past research has highlighted the continued use of precolonial foods within the Alta California mission system alongside the daily consumption of colonial-style beef stews. This article expands on that literature to consider how Indigenous and colonial residents differentially acquired ingredients and prepared daily meals within the Alta California colonial mission system. This assessment demonstrates a sharp divergence between Indigenous and colonists’ daily diet, manifested in the continued use of wild food resources by Indigenous people as well as the maintenance of precolonial culinary practices in the preparation of cattle meat for daily stews. These findings complicate our understanding of foodways within the Spanish mission system and expand our understanding of Indigenous autonomy within conditions of colonialism.

Social scientists use list experiments in surveys to estimate the prevalence of sensitive attitudes and behaviors in a population of interest. However, the cumulative evidence suggests that the list experiment estimator is underpowered to capture the extent of sensitivity bias in common applications. The literature suggests double list experiments (DLEs) as an alternative to improve along the bias-variance frontier. This variant of the research design brings the additional burden of justifying the list experiment identification assumptions in both lists, which raises concerns over the validity of DLE estimates. To overcome this difficulty, this paper outlines two statistical tests to detect strategic misreporting that follows from violations to the identification assumptions. I illustrate their implementation with data from a study on support toward anti-immigration organizations in California and explore their properties via simulation.

Perspectives on past climate using lake sediments are critical for assessing modern and future climate change. These perspectives are especially important for water-stressed regions such as the western United States. One such region is northwestern California (CA), where Holocene-length hydroclimatic records are scarce. Here, we present a 9000-year, relative lake level record from Maddox Lake (CA) using a multi-indicator approach. The Early Holocene is characterized by variably low lake levels with a brief excursion to wetter climates/relative highstand ca. 8.4–8.06 cal ka BP, possibly related to the 8.2 ka cold event and changing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). From 5.2–0.55 cal ka BP, Maddox Lake experienced a long-term regression, tracking changes in summer-winter insolation, tropical and northeast Pacific SSTs, and the southward migration of the ITCZ. This gradual regression culminated in a pronounced relative lowstand during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA). A marked relative highstand followed the MCA, correlative to the Little Ice Age. The latter reflects a far-field response to North Atlantic volcanism, solar variability, and possibly changes in AMOC and Arctic sea ice extent. Our results further confirm the hydroclimatic sensitivity of northwest California to various forcings including those emanating from the North Atlantic.

A small lot of fossil whale barnacles from the Upper Pleistocene of California and the Middle Pleistocene (Chibanian) of Oregon (United States West Coast), described in a 1972 unpublished MA thesis, are formally described and illustrated herein. In that thesis, a new genus and species name were proposed; however, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, they have no taxonomic standing and are thus unavailable. Based on our reappraisal, two specimens in this lot belong to a new, extinct species that can be assigned to the purportedly extant genus Cetopirus. Cetopirus polysyrinx sp. nov. differs from congeners in that its secondary T-shaped flanges are multitubiferous internally, that is, they are perforated by a high number of irregularly-sized and irregularly-spaced tubules that result in a spongy aspect in transverse section. Whether or not this peculiar condition had any adaptive significance is difficult to determine. Considering that Cetopirus is currently known as an obligate epibiont of right whales (including the North Pacific form Eubalaena japonica (Lacépède 1818)), the host of C. polysyrinx sp. nov. was E. japonica or some other species of Eubalaena. The Plio-Pleistocene deposits of the Pacific coast of North America have yielded a rather idiosyncratic fossil whale barnacle fauna, inclusive of the genera Cetolepas, Cryptolepas and now Cetopirus, which seemingly contrasts with all other coeval assemblages worldwide, the latter being in turn dominated by Coronula spp.

During the COVID-19 pandemic peak, the author deployed twice to an emergency Alternate Care Site in Porterville, California. The provision of oxygen to patients there, as seen from a physician’s perspective, does not fully support the description in a recently published article of how the State of California approached oxygen logistics during the COVID-19 surge. To inform future planning, an adequate logistical assessment must include not only approaches for solving technical resource challenges, but also reliable numbers regarding end-user resource utilization, and non-utilization, as well as program costs, benefits, and unintended consequences.

YouTube is now a common public face for archaeology and history. Professionals and amateurs alike make videos, whether it be for monetary gain, outreach, or a combination of the two. The YouTube channel Ghost Town Living is no exception. It features the town's current owner, Brent Underwood, modifying the “abandoned” mining town of Cerro Gordo into a tourist destination. During this process, as is documented in his videos, it becomes clear that Underwood is not only conserving the town but also transforming it into an amalgam of California's mining history. In doing so and by presenting it on YouTube, Underwood is sharing the heritage of Cerro Gordo with the public. Although Underwood is not an archaeologist and is not pretending to be one, some of the methods employed are far from “best practice.” Despite this, I argue that perhaps the overall goals and processes of Underwood should be encouraged to some degree, and in this case, that they do more good than harm for the “preservation” of Cerro Gordo.

The article contributes to filling the research gap concerning Iranian Zoroastrians in diaspora. Using a narrative approach, it explores how second-generation Zoroastrians raised in the United States learn and practice religion while facing the challenges of a pluralistic American society. The article includes a case study of two young Zoroastrian women interviewed in 2019, members of the Californian community. The contrastive cases shed light on the internal heterogeneity of Zoroastrianism, different ways the religion is perceived and experienced, and different ideas about future preservation of the ethno-religious heritage. The study contributes to an understanding of how Zoroastrianism evolves on a new continent and how it differs from what Zoroastrian immigrants brought from Iran.

Dates from the mammal fauna of Crystal Caverns, El Dorado County, California confirm that it is a Pleistocene deposit from the Last Glacial Maximum. Results indicate it is similar in age to other comparable California caves and has a high degree of time averaging.