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Alta California Territory (Upper California) was a 19th-century federal territory formed under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Its boundaries corresponded with those of the preceding Spanish colonial Alta California Province. It included the territory of the present day U.S. states of California, Nevada and Utah and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
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Before Mexico independence
Between 1683 and 1834, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries established a series of religious outposts from today's Baja California and Baja California Sur into present-day California.
The Spanish missions in Alta California were a series of 21 religious and military outposts established by Catholic priests of the Franciscan order between 1769 and 1833, to spread Christianity among the local Native Americans. The missions were part of the first major effort by Europeans to colonize the Pacific Coast region, the most northern and western of Spain's North American land claims. The El Camino Real road connected the missions from San Diego to Mission San Francisco Solano, in Sonoma, a length of 529 miles. Settlers to the region introduced European fruits, vegetables, cattle, horses, ranching and technology into Alta California.
Independent Mexico
Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1822, upon conclusion of the decade-long Mexican War of Independence (Spain did not acknowledge its independence until 1836). With the establishment of a republican government in 1823, Alta California, was not recognized as one of the constituent States of Mexico because of its small population. The 1824 Constitution of Mexico refers to Alta California as a "territory".
After the Mexican secularization act of 1833 the capital of Alta California Territory was Monterey. After a revolt led by Juan Bautista Alvarado in 1836, the territory was transformed into a Department, which granted it more autonomy.
Alta California Territory, which comprised much of the present Southwestern United States, was ceded to the United States by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the peace treaty that concluded the Mexican–American War.