Turlock, California Timeline

This is a very basic timeline meantto give you an idea of major events that may have affected your ancestors lives.  Click here for any rosters, directories, letters, etc. I find that reference Turlock.
Click here for the list of cities in Stanislaus County. Click here for the list of Counties in California.

Some of the  Native American Tribes known to inhabit California were the Hupa, Maidu, Pomo, Modic, Mohave, Chowignas, Pimunguns.  According to Ereferencedesk there were over 135 distinct language dialects.

1542 The official discovery of California by Spain

1545 Typhus and other European diseases start killing larges amounts of native populations in Cuba, and New Spain

1579 Sir Francis Drake claims some land north of San Francisco for England

1633 - 1634 Small Pox

Spanish missionaries start settling California in the 1700s

1775 - 1783 Revolutionary War

1776 Declaration of Independence signed

1793 Yellow Fever

1812 Russian fur traders build Fort Ross just north of San Francisco

1820 American Trappers start arriving from the East

1820 - 1875 Texas - Indian Wars

1821 Mexico gained independence from Spain

1832 - 1866 Cholera

1846 - 1848 Mexican - American War

1848 California is ceded to the United States by Mexico

1849 The Gold Rush begins

1850 California becomes the 31st State

1858 Scarlet Fever

1861-1864 The Civil War

1862 The Great Floods  

1863 Emancipation Proclamation

1871 Turlock Founded

1870s The majority of Turlock's early settlers were Swedish

1876 Turlock's cemetery founded

1877 Jim Crow Law enacted till 1950s

1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act

1898 the American Anti-Imperialist  League formed

1900 Oil discovered in California

1905 Japanese and Korean Exclusion league formed in California and gained 80,000 + members

1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fires

1906 - 1907 Typhoid

1908 - Turlock Incorporated

1908 - Turlock's main business was in agriculture

1910 Angel Island opens (West Coast’s Ellis Island)

1913 California Alien Land Law

1914 - 1918 WWI

1915 - 1955 Polio Outbreaks

1918 - 1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic

1920 Racial Tensions in Turlock rise as jobs are scarce, and farmers hire more and more Japanese immigrants to work in the fields

1920 ACLU founded

1920 Women get the right to vote

1920 - 1933 Prohibition

1921 - 1925 Diphtheria Outbreaks

1921 - 150 White men take 60 Japanese cantaloupe pickers and their belongings, and drive them out of town, evicting them from the Turlock area

1924 United States gives citizenship to some Native Americans

1929 Beginning of the Great Depression

1930 Turlock's population is 20% Assyrian

1933 The Long Beach Earthquake

1939 - 1945 WWII

1941 Pearl Harbor

1942 President Roosevelt Signed Executive Order 9066 (Feb)

1942 General Dewitt issued Public Proclamation No. 1(Mar, internment camps)
1942 Stanislaus County Fairgrounds was used for 3 1/2 months for processing Japanese Americans, and immigrants for relocation to the interment camps.
1942 - 1945 After being used for processing Japanese Americans and immigrants it was used to rehabilitate soldiers, before sending them back into war

Useful Resources
Turlock Historical Society

Turlock Memorial Park