The California Dream: History of a Myth

In recent years, press and political leaders have lamented the demise of the California Dream, a vaguely defined, popular ideal of California life that is said to have originated in the gold rush and to have energized California’s ascent. This essay argues that the emergence of a national ideal of California life can tell us much about changes in American culture, especially since the actual history of the California Dream departs so widely from popular perception. The concept of a “California Dream” did not emerge in the gold rush, but only after The Mamas & The Papas’ smash hit “California Dreamin’” in 1965. It served as both a reinscription of the American Dream and a revision of it to incorporate new social values of the Cold War era, including, among others, the importance of leisure, environmental protection, and healthy living. Warnings of the dream’s decline have attended it from birth, and yet it remains surprisingly popular across an increasingly diverse California population. The dream signaled the exceptional growth that distinguished California in the twentieth century and has represented a quasi-national aspiration that both hearkens to older American ideals and implicitly critiques them by offering an ostensible alternative.