California joined the Union due to the passage of a package of five separate bills.
Human history in California begins with indigenous Americans first arriving in California some 13,00015,000 years ago. 
 California joined the Union as a free state in 1850, due to the Compromise of 1850. 
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the MexicanAmerican War (18461848). 
