PC & WI: Mormons continue on to California

So is it possible for the Mormons to not settle in Utah but continue on to California? If so, what happens?
Unless they're prepared to settle for control of just the southern end of [Upper] California -- and perhaps part of Baja California, too -- they get brought firmly under US authority even more quickly than happened in Utah IOTL. There's no way that they'd be left as effective owners of such valuable 'real estate' as either the goldfields or San Francisco bay.
 

Hnau

Banned
More LDS die on the Mormon Trail, as it'll be longer. Thousands more. When they reach California, the Gold Rush will start up, bringing in non-Mormons who no doubt will eventually persecute the Latter-day Saints. The LDS will be driven either back east towards the Great Basin or to the south to settle the Los Angeles region. In any case, their numbers will be much fewer than OTL.
 
Unless they're prepared to settle for control of just the southern end of [Upper] California -- and perhaps part of Baja California, too -- they get brought firmly under US authority even more quickly than happened in Utah IOTL. There's no way that they'd be left as effective owners of such valuable 'real estate' as either the goldfields or San Francisco bay.

More LDS die on the Mormon Trail, as it'll be longer. Thousands more. When they reach California, the Gold Rush will start up, bringing in non-Mormons who no doubt will eventually persecute the Latter-day Saints. The LDS will be driven either back east towards the Great Basin or to the south to settle the Los Angeles region. In any case, their numbers will be much fewer than OTL.

And it is not as if the Los Angeles region was empty. It had a good number of local Californios and some American prospectors enough to give the Mormons trouble. People seem to think of Southern California as useless empty dessert. Assuming the Mormons make it to California, more of them would die on the trail thinning their numbers. Then the Gold Rush starts and they are persecuted and forced to move south.

Their numbers thin even more. They reach Southern California and the local Californio population, and the small number of Americans arriving there, will likely won't be as friendly either. Now they are stuck in apretty bad situation.
 
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