Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Which crops and animals might be available there?
I have always wondered why no great civilization arose there. Did humans got too late there? It seems unlikely compared to places like the Andes.
I posted a thread about California in ASB a while back. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/california-wild-rice.415159/
Bottom line is that there was a great abundance of natural food and no particular need to develop horticulture, even with a native population of hundreds of thousands. Secondly, the hundred year flood line in the Valley is so high that it would inundate any cities built on the valley floor. A California civilization would have to develop pretty extensive aquaculture and water control structures, and even then anything that isn't build on the western slopes of the Sierras will get wiped out every so often. There aren't any great candidates for domestication there and the extreme remoteness and unique climate means that not much will get brought from outside.
One crop that would change everything radically in North America is potatoes in the Pacific Northwest. It's possible for California people to put one crop of potatoes in fall and one in early spring, but they already had no shortage of fall/winter food sources and you'd need a summer crop to change settlement patterns. I thought wild rice but just couldn't make it work.