WI: 16th Century California Gold Rush?

[SinghSong]

IOTL, the very first European expeditions up there were mounted in 1540, led by Hernando de Alarcón, Vázquez de Coronado and Melchior Díaz, in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold which were believed to exist hundreds of miles to the north across the Sonoran desert (in Alta California). So then, let's say that ITTL, the overland expedition led by Coronado actually followed the plan, and managed to meet up with Alarcón's naval expedition at the coast at the pre-arranged spot near the present-day site of Los Mochis ITTL, instead of having Coronado miss the rendevzous and instead electing to go it alone as he did IOTL, along the path he took historically- up the Sinaloa river valley and hence onwards in a North-Easterly direction, across New Mexico all the way to central Kansas?

If Coronado had managed to make the previously agreed-upon rendezvous point with Alarcón along the coast, then the joint expedition would have continued north-west along the coast of the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California)- resupplied with stores and provisions delivered by Alarcón's ships traveling up the Gulf as planned, all the way up to the Colorado river basin- before tranversing the Yuma Crossing and heading into California via the Imperial Valley. From there, even if TTL's Coronado Expedition only traveled half as far in a NW direction from the Yuma Crossing as it did in its NE direction from the mouth of the Sinaloa River IOTL, then it would have easily transversed the entire length of the Central Valley (reaching it via Palm Springs, San Bernadino, Pasadena, Palmdale and Lancaster, and then through the Tehachapi Pass)- with the possibility of making it as far north as Portland well in the realms of plausibility.

And in doing so, his expedition would have discovered all of those fields of gold they'd been sent to find- and from there, probably kicked off New Spain's Californian Gold Rush in the 1550s, a few hundred years earlier than IOTL. How much of an impact would you think this would have had on the course of history? How much bigger, more populous, and more important would Spain's colonial presence in California have been as a result- and how radically different would the histories of California, Mexico and the USA (if it still even forms ITTL as it did IOTL) be here?

 

[SinghSong]

So, any interest?

 

[Ricardolindo]

It would lead to a huge Spanish settlement in California. BTW, California would become its own viceroyalty. It was considered in our timeline but its population was too small for it. That would not be the case in this timeline.

 

[SinghSong]

It would lead to a huge Spanish settlement in California. BTW, California would become its own viceroyalty. It was considered in our timeline but its population was too small for it. That would not be the case in this timeline.

So basically, California'd become the North American equivalent of Chile, then. How far, and how fast, do you think Spanish settlement in California would expand in this timeline- both northwards, up the Pacific coastline, and inland, towards the Rocky Mountains? And would any of the other colonial powers try to get in on the action earlier, and to a greater extent than IOTL- for instance, the Russians, crossing the Bering Strait and going into Alaska looking for gold (which they'd find, since it was there) from the off?

 

[Gary Oswald]

So basically, California'd become the North American equivalent of Chile, then. How far, and how fast, do you think Spanish settlement in California would expand in this timeline- both northwards, up the Pacific coastline, and inland, towards the Rocky Mountains? And would any of the other colonial powers try to get in on the action earlier, and to a greater extent than IOTL- for instance, the Russians, crossing the Bering Strait and going into Alaska looking for gold (which they'd find, since it was there) from the off?

You're looking at a pod in the 1540s, Russia didn't even reach the pacific until 1639 and didn't fully conquer Siberia until the early 1700s. Yeah some of that can be sped up, but not by much and either way by the time they're in a position to cross the bering strait California would be locked up.

Actually given the main effect would be more spanish interest in the pacific coast earlier, Alaska might well be a spanish colony by that point.

 

[SinghSong]

You're looking at a pod in the 1540s, Russia didn't even reach the pacific until 1639 and didn't fully conquer Siberia until the early 1700s. Yeah some of that can be sped up, but not by much and either way by the time they're in a position to cross the bering strait California would be locked up.

Actually given the main effect would be more spanish interest in the pacific coast earlier, Alaska might well be a spanish colony by that point.

True. How about the other early colonial powers, though? The Portuguese, British, Dutch, French (maybe even the Danes, Swedish, Scots, Couronians and Tuscans, or other nations entirely who never attempted it IOTL)- mightn't this speed up the colonization process, and fuel colonial conflict, across the whole of North America, in a similar manner to how the discoveries of Gold and Silver in Mexico and Peru accelerated the colonization of Central and South America IOTL? It wouldn't just be Spanish interest, after all.

 

[Talwar]

Politically speaking, is 16th century Spain a culture that will encourage/allow tens of thousands of its peasants to just up and take off to pursue their own goals of personal wealth?

Can information about the gold discoveries reach and penetrate into Spanish society to the degree necessary to generate life-changing decisions and hype amongst so many people?

Can they all actually travel from Spain through or around the Americas to California without dying en masse at sea or on overland routes?

Can they be adequately supplied once there?

So I don't think a gold rush is viable. An organized expedition, perhaps - a few ships with a few hundred people, some of whom are going specifically to grow crops and build docks rather than pick rocks, but that, to me, is a very different proposition compared to a rush.

 

[SinghSong]

Politically speaking, is 16th century Spain a culture that will encourage/allow tens of thousands of its peasants to just up and take off to pursue their own goals of personal wealth?

Can information about the gold discoveries reach and penetrate into Spanish society to the degree necessary to generate life-changing decisions and hype amongst so many people?

Can they all actually travel from Spain through or around the Americas to California without dying en masse at sea or on overland routes?

Can they be adequately supplied once there?

So I don't think a gold rush is viable. An organized expedition, perhaps - a few ships with a few hundred people, some of whom are going specifically to grow crops and build docks rather than pick rocks, but that, to me, is a very different proposition compared to a rush.

Didn't it happen in a few other places at around the same time IOTL? If routes are established for people to travel there cross-country through Mexico, and/or across the Pacific (i.e, with the once or twice-yearly Manila Galleons trade route from Manila to Acapulco, which lasted from 1565 to 1815 IOTL, either replaced or increased further through the addition of trade routes from Manila and/or Acapulco to TTL's equivalent of San Francisco), why couldn't it be just as viable as the settlements of Manila and Acapulco were IOTL?

 

[Talwar]

Sorry, I don't know the histories of Manila or Acapulco so can't really comment on them. Were there major movements of civilians to either destination in 1500s?

 

[SinghSong]

Sorry, I don't know the histories of Manila or Acapulco so can't really comment on them. Were there major movements of civilians to either destination in 1500s?

Very much so. IOTL, The first encomendero in the modern Acapulco municipality was established in 1525 at Cacahuatepec, and in 1531, a number of Spaniards, most notably Juan Rodriguez de Villafuerte, left the Oaxaca coast and founded the village of Villafuerte where the city of Acapulco now stands, The province of Acapulco became the encomendero of Rodriguez de Villafuerte, who received taxes in the form of cocoa, cotton and corn, and Acapulco itself was rapidly established as a major port by the early 1530s, with the first major road between Mexico City and the port constructed by 1531, and its wharf, named Marqués, constructed by 1533 between Bruja Point and Diamond Point. Soon after, the area was made an "alcadia" (major province or town); and it had been from the port of Acapulco that Hernando de Alarcón's naval expedition up the Gulf of California had set sail in the first place.

In 1550, thirty Spanish families were sent to live here from Mexico City, to have a permanent base of European residents; and after galleons started arriving in Acapulco from Asia by 1565, Spanish trade in the Far East quickly gave Acapulco a prominent position in the economy of New Spain, rapidly becoming the second most important port in New Spain after Veracruz on the Atlantic coast, due to its direct trade with the Philippines. This trade would focus on the yearly Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade, which was the nexus of all kinds of communications between New Spain, Europe and Asia; and in 1573, after the successful Spanish conquest of Manila, the port of Acapulco was granted the monopoly of the Manila trade IOTL.

However, it's worth mentioning that, IOTL, the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade only began after, having originally sailed as part of the expedition commanded by Miguel López de Legazpi to conquer the Philippines in 1565, Spanish navigators Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta were given the task of finding a return route, setting sail on the 1st June. Arellano, who took a more southerly route, arrived at Barra de Navidad in Jalisco in August of the same year; but reasoning that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did, Urdaneta sailed north to the 38th parallel north, off the east coast of Japan, before catching the eastward-blowing winds ("westerlies") that took him back across the Pacific. And as a result, he made landfall near Cape Mendocino (which he named in honor of Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain), in present-day Humboldt County, 200 miles north of San Francisco, before following the coast south to San Blas and later to Acapulco, arriving on October 8, 1565; by then, most of his crew had died on the long voyage due to the lack of sufficient provisions.

However, Arellano was already in disgrace for his rebellion against the authority of Legazpi, and his notes had been far far less precise and professional than Urdaneta's, and so Urdaneta's route became the famous and trusted one, which all of the Manila galleons took until the 18th century (by which point Arellano's more southerly route had been rediscovered, and it was understood that a less northerly track was sufficient when nearing the North American coast, with galleon navigators starting to steer well clear of the rocky and often fogbound coast of Alta California in favor of the more direct route to Acapulco). ITTL though, where large amounts of gold would have also already been discovered in Alta California itself, wouldn't a major coastal port settlement almost certainly be established there by the Spanish in this time frame, if it hadn't been already by that stage? And after the establishment of Urdaneta's route, which would have inevitably arrived here as their first port of call after making landfall (with more survivors as a result), couldn't it well rival Acapulco, or even take over from Acapulco, as the most important Pacific port in the Americas, and the nexus of communications between New Spain, Europe and Asia?

And IOTL, the English privateer Francis Drake also reached the California coast in 1579, after having captured a Spanish ship heading for Manila and turned north, hoping to intercept another Spanish treasure ship coming south on its return from Manila to Acapulco. He failed in that objective (would he still fail ITTL?), but staked an English claim somewhere on the northern California coast, on June 17th, with the officially accepted location now known as Drakes Bay, 30 miles NW of San Francisco. While encamped there, he had friendly relations with the Coast Miwok people who inhabited the area near his landing, and named the area Nova Albion, or New Albion, claiming sovereignty of the area for Queen Elizabeth I (the second earliest English territorial claim in the world, preceded only by Martin Frobisher's claims in Greenland and Baffin Island, and preceding Humphrey Gilbert's 1583 claim of Newfoundland, as well as the settlements of the Roanoke Colony in 1584, and Jamestown in 1607), but sailed away on 23 July and leaving behind no colonial settlement, before eventually circumnavigating the globe and returning to England in September 1580.

ITTL though, in which Drake would have known full well about the discovery of gold in Northern California by this point, and in which the Spanish treasure ships travelling along this route would've presented an even greater bounty than they did IOTL, wouldn't he have been far more likely to leave behind an British colonial settlement in New Albion at this juncture, and return to these even more fertile hunting grounds, hiding in the coastal fog to ambush the Spanish Galleons on their way to and from the Philippines? And given that any colony he'd have established here, at this time, would've been the first English overseas colony in the Americas, or indeed the world, preceding St. Johns in Newfoundland by 4 years, how massive could the butterflies have been? Provided it didn't meet a similar fate to the first and second Roanoke Colonies, couldn't it potentially become the first epicenter of English settlement in North America (rather than Jamestown and the Colony of Virginia, established by royal charter of the Virginia Company of London under King James I, 27yrs later)?