Albert Bierstadt's California Spring was based on sketches he made while visiting the San Francisco Bay Area (1871-1873). This lush view of the Sacramento River Valley would have convinced viewers—and potential settlers—that California was suitable for both habitation and cultivation.

California's actual climate was satirized in Bret Harte's poem “California Madrigal: On the Approach of Spring” (ca. 1871): "Oh come, my beloved! from thy winter abode, From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed; For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled, And the river once more has returned to its bed. Then fly with me, love, ere the summer's begun, And the mercury mounts to one hundred and one; Ere the grass now so green shall be withered and sear, In the spring that obtains but one month in the year." [Bret Harte, East and West (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004, 65.]