Admission Day in California

Well 161 years ago California was admitted as the 31st state. Does admission day mean anything anymore? Certainly contemporaries in the 19th century saw a great significance in celebrating the admission of their new state, but with national geographic expansion almost fading in the 21st century in many historical imaginations what does it mean now?

During the 1890's California Admission Day celebrations were huge affairs of parades, fairs, and expositions. Most significantly, Admission Day's provided an institutionally sanctioned set of historical memories that would be propagated each year at the end of the summer. For instance, many attractions at Admission Day's would carry connotations of the significance of the Anglo-gold rush, the removal of the Mexicans from sovereignty in Alta California, and California's significance overall to national prestige in its seeming Pacific empire to the west.

In regards to my current project, Gilded Empire, what is the significance of Admission Day?

San Franciscan's particularly celebrated Admission Day with huge excitement. Despite Sacramento being the capital, SF played a crucial role in establishing a constellation of urban ideas and national concepts which structured historical memories and the social imaginations of those whom participated in the celebrations. In San Francisco those whom participated in these celebrations, consciously and unconsciously, engaged in a dialogue between their own historical memories and those presented by the politically powerful. While these dialogues would cause little cognitive dissonance in those who identified with the powerful's historical memories, conflict and incongruities between the lower class, ethnic minorities, and immigrant's historical memories can disrupt, modify, or reinforce their own identities.

The significance of this phenomena outlined above really comes in to play when you ask the question, how political power can influence the way a "city" or the urbane sees itself while also remaining in dialogue (conflictual or otherwise) with those whom occupy the same urban space? And in San Francisco, the urban sphere was far from demographically homogenous. What does this mean when we ask, whose city is it?