Mexico retains SoCal, US gets everything else

[oshron]

some of you may know that, for Anglo-American Rivalry, a butterfly effect in it (officially attributed to British involvement on behalf of Mexico during the war from 1846-48) is that Mexico retains some of the territory that it lost IOTL even though it still loses the war: the Nueces region of Texas (the southernmost area), the land from teh Gadsden Purchase (which is butterflied away), and Southern California. out of personal preference, i cut it off at about the edge of the OTL Greater Los Angeles area.

now, here's the main point of this thread: what does everyone think would be the consequences of a Mexican SoCal and an American NorCal coexisting? one thing ive speculated on is that Monterey may remain the capital of California (for the US) while OTL San Francisco becomes the largest city and de facto capital because of its importance as a port, as well as for being a gateway to the US for immigrants from the Far East (kinda like a west-coast NYC, i guess)

one interesting consequence of Mexico retaining southern california would be that los angeles and hollywood are now in mexican hands. what could this potentially do to the american film industry later on? what will be the pop-media center of the US, where will Universal and Warner Bros. studios be located (if they aren't butterflied away; personally, i'd like to retain them). and what could this do for paleontology if Mexico ends up holding onto Los Angeles, where the La Brea Tar Pits--one of the richest pleistocene fossil sites in the world--are located

i actually live in southern california IRL, so this is part of why im wondering this. could it perhaps be that some californian cities are later purchased by the US as territories and later incorporated into the california state, or that southern california (here including baja) eventually secede from mexico in favor of joining the US? and if so, when would this be most likely to happen?

 

[CaliBoy1990]

some of you may know that, for Anglo-American Rivalry, a butterfly effect in it (officially attributed to British involvement on behalf of Mexico during the war from 1846-48) is that Mexico retains some of the territory that it lost IOTL even though it still loses the war: the Nueces region of Texas (the southernmost area), the land from teh Gadsden Purchase (which is butterflied away), and Southern California. out of personal preference, i cut it off at about the edge of the OTL Greater Los Angeles area.

now, here's the main point of this thread: what does everyone think would be the consequences of a Mexican SoCal and an American NorCal coexisting? one thing ive speculated on is that Monterey may remain the capital of California (for the US) while OTL San Francisco becomes the largest city and de facto capital because of its importance as a port, as well as for being a gateway to the US for immigrants from the Far East (kinda like a west-coast NYC, i guess)

one interesting consequence of Mexico retaining southern california would be that los angeles and hollywood are not in mexican hands. what could this potentially do to the american film industry later on? what will be the pop-media center of the US, where will Universal and Warner Bros. studios be located (if they aren't butterflied away; personally, i'd like to retain them). and what could this do for paleontology if Mexico ends up holding onto Los Angeles, where the La Brea Tar Pits--one of the richest pleistocene fossil sites in the world--are located

i actually live in southern california IRL, so this is part of why im wondering this. could it perhaps be that some californian cities are later purchased by the US as territories and later incorporated into the california state, or that southern california (here including baja) eventually secede from mexico in favor of joining the US? and if so, when would this be most likely to happen?

Might I suggest a border at the 35th parallel? The reason for such is that I think that the U.S. would probably like to retain as much of the San Joaquin Valley as possible and if you look at it through ITouchMap or, more indirectly, NOAA's Solar Calculator, you'll notice that 99.9% of the Valley is north of that line.
There's also the possibility that buying L.A. or Tijuana might be feasible; maybe eventually ending up as an American Hong Kong or Macau of sorts(personally, I'm leaning more towards Tijuana here.)

 

[oshron]

TJ had occurred to me, too. because of its proximity to San Diego, what do you see of that city being bought, with TJ being considered part of it due to butterflies (in another thread a long time ago, someone mentioned that TJ would probably be a suburb (or similar) of san diego had baja been annexed as well as alta california)

 

[Plumber]

The U.S. might have a base at San Diego. Tijuana would be a neighborhood of San Diego.

 

[Kevin R.]

If Mexico retains OTL's Southern California, then it's a near-certainty that, down the line, it's holding onto the Gadsden Purchase area as well, given that the reason why the US bought the land -- to connect San Diego to the southern US -- no longer exists. This means that Tuscon is a Mexican city, Mesa is butterflied away (doubt the Mormons would be founding it on the Mexican side of the Gila River), and Phoenix is a US border city. The reduced Arizona would probably still become a separate territory and later state; Northern Arizona was, IIRC, the main center of population until air conditioning made it possible to live comfortably in Phoenix and Tuscon.

And to expand on something I mentioned earlier: with the Mormon settlement in present-day Mesa butterflied away by the new US-Mexico border, do the Mormons settle other areas of Arizona more heavily? Between that and a reduced population overall, what with the loss of Phoenix's southern suburbs and Tuscon, I could see Arizona having a substantially larger Mormon minority; perhaps 15% by the present day instead of just 5%, and certainly higher before the 20th century Sun Belt boom. What effects would this have on the area?

 

[Daylight Savings]

All of these cities were small or non-existent at the time. Population just moves differently. Santa Barbara is likely much larger and the main city of southern California in the scenario. Hollywood likely ends up somewhere in this area still. The biggest changes are going to be trade issues. With one less route for the transcontinental railroad things will be very different for southern states which will all need to tie into the northern lines.

 

[King Gorilla]

All of these cities were small or non-existent at the time. Population just moves differently. Santa Barbara is likely much larger and the main city of southern California in the scenario. Hollywood likely ends up somewhere in this area still. The biggest changes are going to be trade issues. With one less route for the transcontinental railroad things will be very different for southern states which will all need to tie into the northern lines.

Mexico also gets to keep several large oil fields and their resulting economic windfall.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

All of these cities were small or non-existent at the time. Population just moves differently. Santa Barbara is likely much larger and the main city of southern California in the scenario. Hollywood likely ends up somewhere in this area still. The biggest changes are going to be trade issues. With one less route for the transcontinental railroad things will be very different for southern states which will all need to tie into the northern lines.

Santa Barbara could be fairly more sizable but it just doesn't have the space to become anywhere near OTL's San Diego or L.A. in terms of size.

 

[OS fan]

There would be no metropolis of Los Angeles which would use up all the water in southern California, and Hollywood would have to move to another place - or not exist at all.

 

[David S Poepoe]

some of you may know that, for Anglo-American Rivalry, a butterfly effect in it (officially attributed to British involvement on behalf of Mexico during the war from 1846-48) is that Mexico retains some of the territory that it lost IOTL even though it still loses the war: the Nueces region of Texas (the southernmost area), the land from teh Gadsden Purchase (which is butterflied away), and Southern California. out of personal preference, i cut it off at about the edge of the OTL Greater Los Angeles area.

now, here's the main point of this thread: what does everyone think would be the consequences of a Mexican SoCal and an American NorCal coexisting? one thing ive speculated on is that Monterey may remain the capital of California (for the US) while OTL San Francisco becomes the largest city and de facto capital because of its importance as a port, as well as for being a gateway to the US for immigrants from the Far East (kinda like a west-coast NYC, i guess)

one interesting consequence of Mexico retaining southern california would be that los angeles and hollywood are not in mexican hands. what could this potentially do to the american film industry later on? what will be the pop-media center of the US, where will Universal and Warner Bros. studios be located (if they aren't butterflied away; personally, i'd like to retain them). and what could this do for paleontology if Mexico ends up holding onto Los Angeles, where the La Brea Tar Pits--one of the richest pleistocene fossil sites in the world--are located

i actually live in southern california IRL, so this is part of why im wondering this. could it perhaps be that some californian cities are later purchased by the US as territories and later incorporated into the california state, or that southern california (here including baja) eventually secede from mexico in favor of joining the US? and if so, when would this be most likely to happen?

Monterey would not capital of North California but would, as it happened in OTL, lose to the developing and much more centrally located San Francisco. For San Francisco it is all about 'location, location, location' in relations to the gold fields and a terrific protected harbor for ships. On a clear day one can see the southern tip of San Francisco Bay from the mountains above Monetery.

Actually, the state capital may drift about for a couple years as it did historically.

For the most part Los Angeles will pretty much be a no where place. Its growth came about because of a host of events, beginning with it, rather than Santa Monica, being a railway terminus. The Mexican government probably wouldn't complete a railway connecting their portion of California until the early 20th century. California was geographically isolated from Mexico by desert, mountains and hostile indian tribes.

There would certainly never been any aquaduct built to bring in water to stimulate growth, both in regards to population and agriculture.

I wouldn't consider it all to unlikely that this rump Mexican California wouldn't fall prey to filibusters and eventually be a seperate nation that may apply for US statehood.

I would consider that the 1910 Mexican Revolution would be the most likely time that Mexifornia (OTL southern California) would consider break free and appeal for US protection.

 

[Brady Kj]

So, if this timeline's "Hollywood" can't go to Los Angeles and supposedly can't go to Santa Barbara either, where could it go? I'm assuming it has to be someplace with diverse terrains to film movies in different settings. And can somebody provide a map? I'm not clear on how much of California is Mexican here.

 

[oshron]

So, if this timeline's "Hollywood" can't go to Los Angeles and supposedly can't go to Santa Barbara either, where could it go? I'm assuming it has to be someplace with diverse terrains to film movies in different settings. And can somebody provide a map? I'm not clear on how much of California is Mexican here.

well technically, there's nothing stopping *hollywood from shooting on-location or simply building its sets (the backlot facades at OTL Universal Studios Hollywood come to mind)

though i DO have a map of the TL at the time of the mexican cession

all other changes you see here are irrelevant to this discussion

 

[Montanian]

It's interesting.

Along with Southern California's substantial oil fields accessible with low technology so a big deal by the 1920's OTL (LA's also an oil refining center for much of it's early growth) providing a magnet for population there from elsewhere in Mexico and growing middle class/entrepreneurial class. Probably even some home-grown major oil companies from the isolation instead of just state-owned Pemex (unless George Hearst/William Randolph Heart owned much of the California oil like he did Mexico's OTL triggering an earned distaste for oil barons) and that could be quite significant...anything that increases the number of home-grown industries and manufacturing would have extra impacts in Mexico since it had so little by comparison.

Picking up the harbors at San Diego and Long Beach for the Pacific trade for Mexico with Asia, let alone the U.S., Canada, Chile, Peru, Colombia, etc. would be a big help and you'd see major cities evolve there, perhaps with quite sizable Chinese trade operations.

Substantial mineral resources in the Gadsden purchase, silver, gold, copper, iron ore, coal, etc. that was accessible with 19th and early 20th century technology OTL would both provide a lot of opportunity while probably decreasing the American investment and control (and development/technology/capital) that dominated Northern Mexico mining and railroading in the 19th and early 20th century.

You'd lose the Guggenheim Art Museum (Sol made his money in Arizona copper) and much of the modern art movement his daughter Peggy was a key patron for.

Losing Tombstone Arizona and Lincoln County New Mexico costs ATL as a great many westerns since you lose the key places for Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa, and a lot of Zane Grey novels and hundreds of movies and television shows.

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to Los Angeles probably wouldn't happen at all which cuts out the Southwest Art in paintings, jewelry, fashion, and interior design from a major influence (see Fred Harvey in "Appetite for America" or "Pistols & Paintbrushes.")

Would Napoleon III try to place his nephew Maximilian in control of Mexico with this much more territory to deal with and so inaccessible for ready control by the comparatively few French troops, pre-railroad let alone with big Pacific ports and a border many more hundreds of miles North? I suspect not but then it was always a crazy scheme so I'm probably being too rational in assuming they'd take a deep breath and pick a smaller country to invade instead. Without that, the Mexican government in the late 19th & 20th century would be far different not having had a rebellion against the French and then a key general Porfiro Diaz seizing the reins of power for 30+ years which sets the stage for the PRI party after the revolution so big changes in governance would be almost certain.

Picking up the Imperial Valley and Southern California's overall food production capacity would either give them a substantial food export market out of their ports, triggering a food processing industry parallel to OTL 1860's (canning) forward which'd have big impacts or providing a lot of railroad shipping demand getting that fresh produce into Old Mexico for a healthier diet (which'd also allow a larger Mexican Army and urban/town class as 60-80% of the population was working in production agriculture most places still.

The obvious advantages and appeal of Southern California and it's Pacific ports would make it a major region and population cluster for Mexico like Chicago to New York City or Marseilles to Paris. That would make Mexicans less dependent and focused on what happened in Mexico City, shift more power to the states which by geographical isolation were considerably independent in reality of the central government, while greatly increasing the demand and profitable traffic for railroads, telegraphs, telephones, roads/bridges, and electrical power across Mexico much as it did in the U.S. with considerable unexpected benefits.

Utah, Colorado, Northern California, Nevada would all have intriguing shifts becoming border states. Probably stimulate railroad building and later highways to a greater extent and earlier on with major border cities formed out of what are sleepy little towns OTL, like El Paso, Brownsville, etc.


Maybe retaining Northernmost Mexico would just run the same way what became Northern Mexico OTL, sparsely populated with mines, cattle ranches, and few cities or large towns dominated by American investors and operators...or perhaps more like Brazil only in Mexico this way is an enormous country sparsely populated. Throw a real butterfly in of Mexico copying the US and Argentina in encouraging immigration (despite how that had worked out in losing Texas to the newcomers with Stephen Austin) to gain enough people and perhaps a modernization recruitment effort of technical skills like Peter the Great had done for Russia with German craftsmen, you could end up with a very different Mexico (heck this era coincides with the Irish outmigration from the potato famine, the folks fleeing the civil wars and rebellions of 1848 across Europe...might be a millions of folks who'd choose Mexico then.

Interesting question, never thought about this one before.

 

[jycee]

Well:

Without San Diego (and later LA/Long Beach) the US will look for another suitable Pacific port within its borders. Santa Barbara doesn't have the space to grow, as LA or San Diego. San Luis Obispo is a better candidate, southern port, but it is still not ideal.

Arcata Bay / Eureka north of San Francisco will likely grow as a suitable place for a secondary port besides San Francisco, it is closer to the gold mines and lumber industry. The Southern California agriculture doesn't exist here so most Californian industry is now looking north not south. Arcata might eve grow to be California's Second City.

Without the Gadsen Purchase, Pheonix will become an American border town, and Tuscon ends up a small town in northern Mexico. The Pheonix/Maricopa border cities will likely end up gaining importance in the late 20th century (though Never as Large as El Paso/Juarez or SD/TJ in OTL).

Arizona (unless it stays as a single territory with New Mexico) will likely have a significant Mormon minority. How much will this affect politics over all in the US is uncertain.

The US has no Southern Pacific railroad. So more immigration/industry reaches the west coast to Northern California via Utah (this in turn changes once again politics with the Mormons).

LA never becomes that boom town that it did in OTL, although sooner or later it will grow. It was already California's largest town at the time of the Mex-American war and the oil will be discovered sooner or later, and the agriculture industry of the valleys will still exist. But dessert and hostile tribes will delay its boom. And as mentioned above there will be no aqueduct to really help boost its boom.

Likely LA will grow into a medium size city (about half a million), San Pedro will be a separate port city south of LA and much of the in between will remain filled with the ranchos and oil fields. (by the end of the 20th century I can see several golf clubs appearing as the ranchos adapt to new economies).

Tijuana is just a suburb/rancho attached to San Diego, which will likely become a major port for Mexico, as good coming from the US can be shipped from there to Acapulco and Vallarta as well as the agriculture and cattle produce of coming from Los Angeles.

Mexico will likely build its Pacific railroad, linking Guadalajara to Los Angeles/San Pedro sometime around the 1920s (it depends of-course on the stability of the country at the time).

Interestingly there will be no border coastal town ala San Diego/Tijuana, since north of LA you have too many mountains to build a proper American border town.

Hollywood. If things progress similarly to OTL, the film industry will try to get as far away from NY as possible to a place that offers the similar advantages that LA did. My best guess is that the silicon valley just became the silver-screen valley in TTL. It has the weather, and the space suitable to build the industry. Plus in OTL San Fransisco kept a rather sizable film industry until about the 70s.

Or the US can end up with a decentralized film industry.

 

[Montanian]

Just remembered California's oil production/refineries and location so close to Pacific ports was a hugely important element in the Allies' fuels sourcing in World War II, second only to Texas and obviously closer to the U.S. Pacific diesel-sucking fleet/aviation gasoline-sucking air corps. Mexico sided with the U.S. in the war but whether they'd have had the same scale of oil refineries, pipelines, and oilfields developed in 1941 as were developed to fuel America's automobiles fleet is hard to know. It could easily have had far less capacity in ATL which would slow and constrict the Pacific War considerably as well as fuel for domestic farming/mining/manufacturing/trucking/transportation. Maybe add another year to World War II, the resources available and in shortfall had all kinds of ripples.

Film production moving from New Jersey to Santa Clara/San Jose instead of Hollywood is an interesting idea. You'd still have Stanford University and Fred Terman as tech generators there as Leland Stanford's Central Pacific Railroad would if anything been more profitable without a Southern Pacific competitor and all American investment focused in the part of California the Central Pacific served.

You'd lose Las Vegas as a gambling capital too, it's quick drive from Los Angeles and Southern California population centers was the reason it worked so it'd likely be back at sleepy little town, unless Hoover Dam's vast amount of cheap, new hydroelectric turned it into an aluminum smelting center or other such odd zig zag.

California would have to be a more coherent, less divided state without two functional capitals, San Francisco and Los Angeles, so radically different and in endless struggle for what the state's to do or be. Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney/Disneyland, Raymond Chandler, Howard Hughes, the Beach Boys, Marilyn Monroe, McDonalds/Burger King/Taco Bell out of San Bernadino, John Wayne from USC football, there'd be all sorts of butterflies moving people from an area that was so formative to their adult years.

 

[oshron]

i had also wondered about disney. since walt was from chicago, and if *hollywood is instead located at *silicon valley, i could imagine the disneyland analogy being constructed relatively close to there, perhaps even roughly the same distance that OTL anaheim is from OTL hollywood. monterey again comes to mind, or maybe someplace further south

 

[corourke]

Losing the Southern route to the west coast probably makes it a good deal harder to reach / support California (and Oregon and Washington) in general. In a conflict with Britain or someone else in the Pacific (Russia?), California would be that much more vulnerable to foreign ships.

 

[oshron]

while it wouldn't be as easy, couldn't the west coast conceivably be industrialized to become more self-sufficient that it wouldnt desperately need reinforcements? the gold rush still occurs ITTL (i see no reason for it not to) so millions of people will be heading to california from all over the world to try to make their fortunes. personally, ive been speculating that san francisco might become something of a west coast version of new york, since there's incentive for people to move there in the first place because of the gold rush and later on America's promise of freedom (classic immigration), and san francisco WAS the western center of immigration, being the location of angel island and whatnot

and just because access to the west coast is a bit more restricted doesn't mean that the americans would necessarily be vulnerable; IOTL, preparations were made for a potential japanese invasion during WW2 with long-range cannons positioned high up on hillsides that could take down approaching ships (or at least discourage them from approaching). and as an aside, im planning for there to be a russo-american alliance starting in the late 1860s or early 1870s due to butterflies

 

[Brady Kj]

I just cross-referenced this map with a map of California, and it sure looks to me like the border's a great deal north of Santa Barbara, and close to San Luis Obispo.

 

[oshron]

yeah, i decided to set i up so that hearst castle and the area around it were still in the US