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The obsolete U.S. expression California toothpick designated a bowie-knife, i.e., a large knife, with a blade from ten to fifteen inches long and above an inch broad, curved and double-edged near the point, used originally by American frontiersmen as a weapon.
The following explanations are from an article by Joseph A. Rawlings, of the Associated Press, dated Chicago, Illinois, Saturday 1st October 1938, published in the Sunday Times-Signal (Zanesville, Ohio, USA) of Sunday 2nd October 1938 [Section 1: page 4, column 7]:
Word historians at the University of Chicago estimated today they were 38,500 words away from their lexicographic goal—the completion of a record of the language of the United States.
[…]
From those daring Americans who in ’49 daubed “California or bust” on their prairie schooners before they headed for the gold fields *, has come the material for a colorful portion of the dictionary.
When the lure of gold separated husbands and wives, the expression “California widow” sprang into use. A deck of cards became a “California prayer book” and a Bowie knife a “California toothpick.”
* This refers to the California Gold Rush, which, in fact, began in 1848.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression California toothpick that I have found:
1-: From an advertisement for A. H. DeWitt’s store, Broad Street, Columbus, published in The Columbus Enquirer (Columbus, Georgia, USA) of Tuesday 21st October 1851 [page 3, column 4]:
Rogers’s Table Cutlery, Pocket Knives, California Tooth Picks, &c.
Colt’s, Allen’s and other’s Pistols, single and six barrel! Guns, Caps, Powder Flasks, Shot Pouches.
2-: From the New Orleans Daily Delta (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA) of Wednesday 13th June 1855 [page 1, column 4]:
LETTER FROM KEY WEST.
Key West, Fla., June, 1855.
Messrs. Editors: Our last dispatch was forwarded by the steamer Walker on the 1st. We then reported […] the wounding of one of the men, Clark, by the 1st Lieutenant of that ship. This man was shot in the groin […]. The knife with which the assault was made upon Lieut. Armstrong, is what is called a California tooth-pick, and in the hands of a desperate man a most deadly weapon. We presume that Lieut. Armstrong will demand a court martial—if for no other reason, to show that he was defending himself, and maintaining the discipline so necessary, among probably the worst crew ever shipped on board a man-of-war.
3-: From Eutaw. A Sequel to The Forayers, or The Raid of the Dog-Days. A Tale of the Revolution (New York: Redfield, 1856), by the U.S. poet, novelist and historian William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) [chapter 13, page 142]:
He had caught up, unseen by most of the party, his pistols and hunter-knife—the latter a most formidable weapon, only inferior in size and weight to the modern “California toothpick.”
4-: From a review of Oriental and Western Siberia: A Narrative of Seven Years’ Explorations and Adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, The Kirgis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and Part of Central Asia (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1858), by the British travel writer Thomas Witlam Atkinson (1799-1861)—review published in The Charleston Mercury (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) of Friday 19th March 1858 [page 2, column 5]:
Would you travel, gentle reader? See the world—see new worlds—open your eyes upon rare sights, scenes, peoples, beasts, birds and natural wonders, and human monstrosities? Here is your carte du pais [sic]. Get yourself ready. Put on your unmentionables, made, if you please, of chamois leather, corduroy, or any other impervious and indestructible material. Procure weather-proofs for every exposed province of the animal man. Get yourself a Minie rifle; a pair of Colt’s best revolving-revolvers; take care that you fasten in your belt a ‘California toothpick’ of the most ample dimension; cram a keg of powder into your valise and a bushel of bullets; these will do at the start.
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