The Spanish found the gold in California

Lusitania

Donor
Okay, I see I wasn't working from your parameters; gold not being discovered until deep in the Eighteenth Century.
Ok. I was going off the two previous posts in which the most plausible was in late 18th century when the number of Spanish was highest in California and the chance of discovering gold most likely.
 
The earliest possible discovery of gold within the OP's specified time frame is Sebastian Vizcaino's expedition, which got as far as OTL Monterrey. Apparently he wanted to found a settlement at that location IOTL, but his boss got sent to become Viceroy of Peru and the replacement was less supportive. Maybe a PoD would be Gaspar de Zuniga not getting sent to Peru, so the Monterrey settlement effort goes ahead and there's a Spanish presence in central California from the very early 1600s onward (some military justification: protecting the Acapulco Galleons from English raiding, since Drake had claimed the region shortly before?). It'll take a while to go from that to finding gold--IOTL, it took 80 years to go from the first Spanish missionary efforts to the discovery of gold, so they might not actually find any until the latter half of the seventeenth century--might California become contested during the War of the Spanish Succession?

Vizcaino's Wikipedia page also says that he was involved in diplomacy with the Shogunate in Japan at this time, and his own disregard for Japanese court etiquette helped sour relations. Perhaps if he's busy as Governor of Alta California at Monterrey, someone else has better luck maintaining relations between Spain and Japan--which could put Japan in an interesting position once gold is discovered and Spain stumbles into another great European war.
 
I don't disagree. I glibly referred to it as 'that whole lack of immunity thing', but you phrased it far better and accurately.

It sounded to me like SpazzReflex was saying that the Spanish set out to exterminate the native population in a program of designed genocide.

No, the Spanish did not set out to exterminate them, but the Missions as you and Lusitania explain were often diseased labor camps. However, given OTL history surrounding the Gold Rush, prospectors and miners were pretty deliberate about their goals of exterminating Natives. The logical end point is Missions becoming sanctuary (forced or otherwise) because of the hostile environment created by settlers.
 
It won't be as heavily settled, I would assume: The Spanish already had other gold-mining places in South America and such. You would definitely see earlier developments though, but the USA is bound to get California sometime.
With a 17th century PoD there may not even be a USA

edit: I see I've been ninja'd
 
In response to several comments, sometimes people simply get really lucky. It's completely possible for a lucky explorer or missionary to find the gold. It's far from ASB.
 
For christ's sake, okay, there might not be a USA, its too early. There's no need for y'all to clamber up and attempt to prove me wrong first.
 
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