Stockton's population in was , It was named an All-America City in , , , and again in and It lies at the southeastern corner of a large inland river delta that isolates it from other nearby cities such as Sacramento and those of the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is named after Robert F. Stockton , [ 20 ] and it was the first community in California to have a name not of Spanish or Native American origin. It provided easy access for trade and transportation to the southern gold mines.
The University of the Pacific UOP , chartered in , is the oldest university in California, and has been located in Stockton since In , Stockton filed for what was then the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history β which had multiple causes, including financial mismanagement in the s, generous fringe benefits to unionized city employees, [ 21 ] and the financial crisis. Stockton successfully exited bankruptcy in February They built their villages on low mounds to keep their homes above regular floods.
It was a centuries-old Native American footpath that led through the Sacramento Valley over the Cascades and into present-day Oregon. The extensive network of waterways in and around Stockton was fished and navigated by Miwok Indians for centuries. During the California Gold Rush , the San Joaquin River was navigable by ocean-going vessels, making Stockton a natural inland seaport and point of supply and departure for prospective gold-miners.
From the midth century onward, Stockton became the region's transportation hub, dealing mainly with agricultural products. He then came overland from Missouri to California with the Bartleson-Bidwell Party in and began to go by Carlos, when he began working for John Sutter. As an alien, Weber could not secure a land grant directly, so he formed a partnership with Guillermo William Gulnac. He applied in Weber's place for Rancho Campo de los Franceses , a land grant of 11 square leagues on the east side of the San Joaquin River.
Gulnac and Weber dissolved their partnership in Gulnac's attempts to settle the Rancho Campo de los Franceses failed, and Weber acquired it in In Weber had induced a number of settlers to locate on the rancho when the MexicanβAmerican War broke out. Captain Weber's decision to change sides lost him a great deal of the trust he had built up among his Mexican business partners. As a result, he moved to the grant in and sold his business in San Jose in At the start of the California Gold Rush in , Europeans and Americans started to arrive in the area of Weber's rancho on their way to the goldfields.
