| dbpprop:abstract
|
- There have been at least 27 attempts to split up the state of California since it acquired statehood in 1850. Before statehood, the South strongly pushed for a Southern state in Southern California below the 35th parallel north; while the South reluctantly acceded to a single, free state in the Compromise of 1850, proposals for division continued up to the Civil War. In 1854, the California Assembly passed a plan to trisect the state. The southern counties as far north as Monterey, Merced, and part of Mariposa, then sparsely populated but today containing two-thirds of California's population, would become the State of Colorado (the name Colorado was later adopted for another territory established in 1861), and the northern counties of Del Norte, Siskiyou, Modoc, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Tehama, Plumas, and portions of Butte, Colusa (which included what is now Glenn County), and Mendocino, an area which today has a population of little more than half a million, would become the State of Shasta. In 1859, the legislature and governor approved the Pico Act splitting off the area south of the 36th parallel north as the Territory of Colorado but the federal government did not act on it. Since as far back as the mid-19th century, the mountainous area of northern California and parts of southwestern Oregon have been proposed as a separate state. In 1941, some counties in the area ceremonially seceded, one day a week, from their respective states as the State of Jefferson. This movement disappeared after America's entry into World War II, but the notion has been rekindled in recent years. In the late 19th century, there was serious talk in Sacramento of splitting the state in two at the Tehachapi Mountains because of the difficulty of transportation across the rugged range. The discussion ended when it was determined that building a highway across the mountains was feasible; this road eventually became the Ridge Route. In 1992, State Senator Stan Statham sponsored a bill to allow a referendum in each county on a partition into three new states: North, Central, and South California. The proposal died in the state Senate. In the wake of the 2003 gubernatorial recall, some people have proposed that the state should split into as many as four new states, dividing distinct geographically and politically defined areas as the Bay Area, North Coast, and Central Valley, as well as the historic Jefferson area, into their own states. A proposal to make the Colorado River basin of easternmost California (Imperial, parts of Riverside and San Bernardino) and three western Arizona counties (Mohave, Yuma and La Paz) into a separate state known as Riviera, with the possible state capital in either Blythe, California or Yuma, Arizona, the area's most populous city. In early 2009, former California state assemblyman Bill Maze began lobbying to split 13 coastal counties, which usually vote Democratic, into a separate state to be known as either "Coastal California" or "Western California. " Maze's primary reason for wanting to split the state was because of how "conservatives don't have a voice" and how Los Angeles and San Francisco "control the state. " The counties that would make up the new state would be Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and parts of Los Angeles or Orange counties.
|
![[RDF Data]](/statics/sw-cube.png)
