Portal:California

California
California
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	State of California
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California (/ˌkælɪˈfɔːrnjə/ ) is a state in the Western Region of the United States that lies on the Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California to the south. With over 39 million residents across an area of 163,696 square miles (423,970 km²), it is the most populous U.S. state, the third-largest by area, and most populated subnational entity in North America.

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization by the Spanish Empire. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California gold rush started in 1848 and led to social and demographic changes, including depopulation of Indigenous tribes. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state in 1850, as a free state, following the Compromise of 1850.

California has the nation's largest economy with a gross state product of $4.132 trillion as of Q3 2024. It is the world's largest sub-national economy, and would by most estimations rank 5th globally by nominal GDP. The state also leads the nation in agricultural output, led by its production of dairy, almonds, and grapes. With the busiest port in the country (Los Angeles), California plays a pivotal role in the global supply chain, hauling in about 40% of goods imported to the US. Notable contributions to popular culture, ranging from entertainment, sports, music, and fashion, have their origins in California. California is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, profoundly influencing global entertainment. The San Francisco Bay and the Greater Los Angeles areas are seen as the centers of the global technology and U.S. film industries, respectively. (Full article...)

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State Route 160 (SR 160) is a state highway in the U.S. state of California consisting of two sections. The longer, southern, section is a scenic highway through the alluvial plain of the Sacramento River, linking SR 4 in Antioch with Sacramento via the Antioch Bridge. The northern section, separated from the southern by Sacramento city streets, is the North Sacramento Freeway, running from the 16th Street Bridge over the American River to Interstate 80 Business towards Roseville.

This northern section was deleted from the definition in the Streets and Highways Code in 2003, when the relinquished portion through downtown Sacramento was also removed, but it is still maintained and signed by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) as SR 160. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various California-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Map of Spain's Manila galleon trade routes, showing routes between the Spanish East Indies and Acapulco passing along the coast of California. (from History of California)
Image 2In-N-Out burgers (from Culture of California)
Image 3California's first State Capitol building in San Jose, which served as the capital of California 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 4Between 1846 and 1873, U.S. government agents waged an extermination campaign against Indigenous Californians, known as the California genocide, resulting in as many as 100,000 deaths. (from History of California)
Image 5SS California (1848), the first paddle steamer to steam between Panama City and San Francisco, as part of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. (from History of California)
Image 6The 1835 Manifiesto a la República Mejicana, by José Figueroa, was the first book published in California (from Culture of California)
Image 7Depiction of the Donner Party heading west on the California Trail. (from History of California)
Image 8"Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California", c. 1850 (from History of California)
Image 9Presidio of San Francisco, founded by José Joaquín Moraga in 1776. (from History of California)
Image 10General Richard Barnes Mason was the longest serving U.S. Military Governor of California (1847–1849), overseeing California's transition into statehood. (from History of California)
Image 11The railway station in Sacramento in 1874. (from History of California)
Image 12Stanford University Oval (from Culture of California)
Image 13Goldfields in the Sierra Nevada and Shasta Cascade. (from History of California)
Image 14A Southern Pacific Train at Arcade Depot, Los Angeles, 1891 (from History of California)
Image 15Forces raising the U.S. flag over the Monterey Customhouse following their victory at the Battle of Monterey (from History of California)
Image 16The Battle of Río San Gabriel, in 1847, was a decisive victory for the American campaign in Alta California. (from History of California)
Image 17Junípero Serra conducting the first mass in Monterey Bay in 1770. (from History of California)
Image 18The American capture of San Diego by the USS Cyane in 1846 (from History of California)
Image 19Poppies, Antelope Valley, a California Impressionist painting by Benjamin Chambers Brown (from Culture of California)
Image 20The colonial coat of arms of the Californias, granted by Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of New Spain. (from History of California)
Image 21Juan Bautista de Anza led the 1774-76 Anza Expeditions. (from History of California)
Image 22The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions. (from History of California)
Image 23Depiction of the California hide trade. (from History of California)
Image 24Mission Santa Barbara, founded in 1786, was the first mission to be established by Fermín de Lasuén. (from History of California)
Image 25Portrait of an "assimilated" Maidu man in Sacramento, 1867. (from History of California)
Image 26Depiction of the revolt of the Mission Indians against padre Luis Jayme at Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1775. (from History of California)
Image 27Joaquín Murrieta, called the "Robin Hood of California", was a notorious outlaw during the California Gold Rush. He served as inspiration for Zorro, the famed Californian bandit-hero. (from History of California)
Image 28Map of the route taken by the Anza Expedition of 1775–76, from the Presidio of Tubac to San Francisco Bay. (from History of California)
Image 29Bilingual English-Spanish sign in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. (from Culture of California)
Image 30Angustias de la Guerra played a crucial role in defending women's property rights during the drafting of the Constitution of California. (from History of California)
Image 31The Getty Villa (from Culture of California)
Image 32Manuel Domínguez built Domínguez Adobe on Rancho San Pedro in 1826. (from History of California)
Image 33The Vallecitos stop of the Butterfield Overland Mail, in Julian, California. (from History of California)
Image 34The Treaty of Cahuenga, signed at the Campo de Cahuenga in 1847 by Californio general Andrés Pico and American general John C. Frémont, proclaimed a ceasefire under an American victory. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed a year later in 1848, officially ended the Mexican–American War and formally ceded Alta California to the United States. (from History of California)
Image 35Pacheco Adobe, built 1835 by Salvio Pacheco on Rancho Monte del Diablo. (from History of California)
Image 36Francis Drake's 1579 landing in "New Albion" (modern-day Point Reyes); engraving by Theodor De Bry, 1590. (from History of California)
Image 37Gaspar de Portolá served as the first Governor of the Californias and led the famed Portolá expedition of 1769-70. (from History of California)
Image 38General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo reviewing his troops in Sonoma in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 39Flag of Company A (The California 100) during the U.S. Civil War. (from History of California)
Image 40Founded by Vicente Francisco de Sarría in 1817, Mission San Rafael Arcángel, was the last mission founded during the Spanish period. (from History of California)
Image 41The University of California, Berkeley is the flagship school of the University of California system. (from Culture of California)
Image 42While slavery was abolished in California by Mexican authorities in 1829, the first California State Legislature under U.S. statehood passed the 1850 Indian Indenture Act, which allowed for the forced labor of indigenous Californians by Americans. (from History of California)
Image 43Presidio of Santa Barbara. (from Culture of California)
Image 44Mission San Francisco Solano, founded in 1823 by order of Governor Luis Antonio Argüello, was the last Californian mission established. (from History of California)
Image 45The 1562 map of the Americas, created by Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez, which applied the name California for the first time. (from History of California)
Image 46Portrait of a Californio in traditional vaquero clothing. Californios benefitted immensely by the establishment of the ranchos of California, following the Mexican secularization act of 1833. (from History of California)
Image 47Bodega y Quadra led a 1775 expedition along the coast of California into the Pacific Northwest. (from History of California)
Image 48Map of the Butterfield Overland Mail routes through California, c. 1858. (from History of California)
Image 49The Petaluma Adobe, built by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo in 1836 on Rancho Petaluma. (from History of California)
Image 50Dividing the Light (2007), a skyspace by James Turrell at Pomona College (from Culture of California)
Image 51The Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 52Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, founded in 1771 by padres Pedro Benito Cambón and Ángel de la Somera. (from History of California)
Image 53California was often depicted as an island, due to the Baja California peninsula, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, such as in this 1650 map by cartographer Johannes Vingboons. (from History of California)
Image 54San Francisco harbor, c. 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 55Advertisement for sailing to California, c. 1850. (from History of California)
Image 56Concord Coach no. 251 in Wells Fargo livery in Old Town San Diego. (from History of California)
Image 57The 1846 Bear Flag Revolt declared the California Republic and prefaced the American conquest of California. (from History of California)
Image 58Balthazar, Inhabitant of Northern California, an 1818 portrait of a Miwok man by artist Mikhail Tikhanov. (from History of California)
Image 59Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, established in 1770, was the headquarters of the Californian mission system from 1797 until 1833. (from History of California)

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I move between San Francisco and Paris [...] I have a wonderful beach house in California.

— Danielle Steel

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Image 1

Eastwood in 2010

Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Eastwood's greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang 'Em High (1968), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985), the action-war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the war film Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action film In the Line of Fire (1993), and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995). More recent works include Gran Torino (2008), The Mule (2018), and Cry Macho (2021). Since 1967, Eastwood's company Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films. (Full article...)
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Murray M Chotiner (October 4, 1909 – January 30, 1974) was an American political strategist, attorney, government official, and close associate and friend of President Richard Nixon during much of the 37th President's political career. He served as campaign manager for the future president's successful runs for the United States Senate in 1950 and for the vice presidency in 1952, and managed the campaigns of other California Republicans. He was active in each of Nixon's two successful runs for the White House in low-profile positions.

Chotiner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; his father moved the family to California and then abandoned his wife and children. Murray Chotiner attended UCLA, and graduated from the Southwestern School of Law. He practiced law in Los Angeles, and branched out into public relations. Involving himself in Republican politics, he played an active part in several political campaigns and made an unsuccessful run for the California State Assembly in 1938. (Full article...)
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Hanna in 1977

William Denby "Bill" Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, voice actor, and occasional musician who is best known for co-creating Tom and Jerry and providing the vocal effects for the series' title characters. Alongside Joseph Barbera, he also founded the animation studio and production company Hanna-Barbera.

Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930 and steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, creating or producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors. (Full article...)
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Blanc in 1959

Melvin Jerome Blanc (born Blank /blæŋk/; May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over 60 years. During the Golden Age of Radio, he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including those of Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, The Great Gildersleeve, Judy Canova and his own short-lived sitcom.

Blanc became known worldwide for his work in the Golden Age of American Animation as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. Blanc also voiced the Looney Tunes characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd after replacing their original performers Joe Dougherty and Arthur Q. Bryan, respectively, although he occasionally voiced Elmer during Bryan's lifetime as well. He later voiced characters for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, including: Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones, Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons, Secret Squirrel on The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, the title character of Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman on Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels and The Flintstone Kids. (Full article...)
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Official portrait, 2019

Nancy Patricia Pelosi (/pəˈloʊsi/ pə-LOH-see; née D'Alesandro; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who was the 52nd speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman elected as U.S. House Speaker and the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of Congress, leading the House Democrats from 2003 to 2023. A member of the House since 1987, Pelosi currently represents California's 11th congressional district, which includes most of San Francisco. She is the dean of California's congressional delegation.

Pelosi was born and raised in Baltimore, and is the daughter of mayor and congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. She graduated from Trinity College, Washington, in 1962 and married businessman Paul Pelosi the next year; the two had met while both were students. They moved to New York City before settling down in San Francisco with their children. Focused on raising her family, Pelosi stepped into politics as a volunteer for the Democratic Party in the 1960s. After years of party work, rising to chair the state party, she was first elected to Congress in a 1987 special election and is now in her 20th term. Pelosi steadily rose through the ranks of the House Democratic Caucus to be elected House minority whip in 2001 and elevated to House minority leader a year later, becoming the first woman to hold each of those positions in either chamber of Congress. (Full article...)
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Gyllenhaal in 2019

Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal (/ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/ JIL-ən-hawl, Swedish: [ˈjʏ̂lːɛnˌhɑːl]; born December 19, 1980) is an American actor who has worked on screen and stage for over thirty years. Born into the Gyllenhaal family, he is the son of film director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, and the younger brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. He began acting as a child, making his debut in City Slickers (1991), followed by roles in his father's films A Dangerous Woman (1993) and Homegrown (1998). His breakthrough roles were as Homer Hickam in the biopic October Sky (1999) and a troubled teenager in the thriller Donnie Darko (2001). Gyllenhaal expanded to big-budget films with a starring role in the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.

Gyllenhaal played Jack Twist in Ang Lee's 2005 romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, for which he won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. His career progressed with starring roles in the thriller Zodiac (2007), the romantic comedy Love & Other Drugs (2010), and the science fiction film Source Code (2011). Further acclaim came with his roles in Denis Villeneuve's thrillers Prisoners (2013) and Enemy (2013), and he received nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performances as a manipulative journalist in Nightcrawler (2014) and a troubled writer in Nocturnal Animals (2016). His highest-grossing release came with the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), in which he portrayed Mysterio. After playing a supporting role in the drama Wildlife (2018), Gyllenhaal starred in action or thriller projects, including the films The Guilty (2021), Ambulance (2022) and Road House (2024), as well as the series Presumed Innocent (2024). (Full article...)
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Meyer in 1996 (photo by Roger Ebert)

Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the latter of which he considered his definitive work. (Full article...)
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Milk in June 1978

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Milk was born and raised in New York. He acknowledged his homosexuality in adolescence but secretly pursued sexual relationships well into adulthood. The counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and sexual expression. Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he held an assortment of jobs and frequently changed addresses, he settled in the Castro, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He ran for city supervisor in 1973 but the existing gay political establishment resisted him. Milk's campaign was compared to theater due to his personality, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". The voter response caused him to also run for the California State Assembly. Due to his growing popularity, he led the gay rights movement in battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco began to choose neighborhood representatives rather than city-wide ones. During Milk's almost eleven months in office, he sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing, and employment. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill. (Full article...)
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Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 – December 17, 2003) was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s. Hedrick's contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading, and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before the label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art, at times resorting to puns. (Full article...)
Image 10

Publicity photo of Anna May Wong from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

Born in Los Angeles to second-generation Taishanese Chinese American parents, Wong became engrossed in films and decided at the age of 11 that she would become an actress. Her first role was as an extra in the movie The Red Lantern (1919). During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first films made in color, and in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon and had achieved international stardom in 1924. Wong had been one of the first to embrace the flapper look. In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the "world's best dressed woman." In the 1920s and 1930s, Wong was acclaimed as one of the top fashion icons. (Full article...)
Image 11

Manson's 1968 mugshot

Charles Milles Manson (né Maddox; November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal, cult leader, and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some cult members committed a series of at least nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. The prosecution contended that, while Manson never directly ordered the murders, his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy.

Before the murders, Manson had spent more than half of his life in correctional institutions. While gathering his cult following, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who introduced Manson to record producer Terry Melcher. In 1968, the Beach Boys recorded Manson's song "Cease to Exist", renamed "Never Learn Not to Love" as a single B-side, but Manson was uncredited. Afterward, he attempted to secure a record contract through Melcher, but was unsuccessful. (Full article...)
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London in 1903

John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal welfare, workers' rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam. (Full article...)
Image 13

Official portrait, 1983

Nancy Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/; born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016) was an American film actress who was the first lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989, as the second wife of President Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was born in New York City. After her parents separated, she lived in Maryland with an aunt and uncle for six years. When her mother remarried in 1929, she moved to Chicago and later was adopted by her mother's second husband. As Nancy Davis, she was a Hollywood actress in the 1940s and 1950s, starring in films such as The Next Voice You Hear..., Night into Morning, and Donovan's Brain. In 1952, she married Ronald Reagan, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild. He had two children from his previous marriage to Jane Wyman, and he and Nancy had two children together. Nancy Reagan was the first lady of California when her husband was governor from 1967 to 1975, and she began to work with the Foster Grandparents Program. (Full article...)
Image 14

Emperor Norton, c. 1871–72

Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818 – January 8, 1880) was a resident of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 declared himself "Emperor of these United States" in a proclamation that he signed "Norton I., Emperor of the United States". Commonly known as Emperor Norton, he took the secondary title "Protector of Mexico" in 1866.

Born in England and raised in South Africa, Norton left Cape Town in late 1845, sailing from Liverpool to Boston in early 1846 and eventually arriving in San Francisco in late 1849. After a brief period of prosperity, Norton made a business gambit in late 1852 that played out poorly, ultimately forcing him to declare bankruptcy in 1856. (Full article...)
Image 15

Coppola in December 2024

Francis Ford Coppola (/ˈkoʊpələ/ KOH-pə-lə, Italian: [ˈkɔppola]; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest directors of all time. Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or and a BAFTA Award.

After directing The Rain People (1969), Coppola co-wrote Patton (1970), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with Edmund H. North. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather (1972), which won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay and revolutionized the gangster genre. He directed The Godfather Part II (1974), which also won Best Picture and earned Coppola Best Director. Also in 1974, Coppola released the thriller The Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. (Full article...)

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... that the opening day of a California TV station was affected by a strike when workers refused to cross a two-man picket line?
... that Frederick E. Olmsted was instrumental in the creation of nineteen national forests and the Muir Woods National Monument in California?
... that in the early 1990s, several TV stations in Northern California experimented with moving prime time up an hour?
... that the Electriquette was an electric wicker vehicle that could be rented at the 1915 Panama–California Exposition?
... that Cypress College basketball coach Don Johnson, who was an All-American at UCLA, developed two players with minimal experience who later played for his alma mater and set records in the NBA?
... that construction workers at UC Berkeley paused their work in solidarity with the 2022 University of California academic workers' strike?
... that John Moore's mother, after learning that UCLA's student-body president was Black, said "this is where he's going to school"?
... that the serial arsonist who started the fatal Nihon Shōgakkō fire confessed to starting at least 25 other California fires in the early 1920s?

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Santa Cruz, California

Credit: Mbz1: Mila Zinkova

A surfer performing a gash, or very sharp turn. Santa Cruz and the surrounding Northern California coastline is a popular surfing destination, however the year-round low temperature of the ocean in that region (averaging 57ºF/14ºC) necessitates the use of wetsuits.

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Credit: Urban

The Sierra Nevada (Spanish for "Snowy Range") is a mountain range located in the U.S. state of California. In a few places, it overlaps into neighboring Nevada. The range is also known informally as the Sierra, the High Sierra, and the Sierras.

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Government of California

List of California state agencies • Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments • California Attorney General • California State Board of Education • CDF Aviation Management Program • CalPERS • California Air Resources Board • California Commission for Economic Development • California Department of Boating and Waterways • California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection • California Department of Insurance • California Insurance Commissioner election, 2006 • California Legislative Analyst's Office • California Military Department • California Public Utilities Commission • California Speaks • California State Lands Commission • California State Lottery • California executive branch • CaliforniaVolunteers • California State Capitol • List of California District Attorneys • Districts in California • State of California enterprise IT systems • Department of Fair Employment and Housing • California Geological Survey • Governor of California • 11-99 Foundation • California Institute for Regenerative Medicine • California Insurance Commissioner • Joint Powers Authority • Local Agency Formation Commission • Secretary of State of California • List of law enforcement agencies in California • California State Controller • California State Police • California Department of Transportation • California State Treasurer • Westlands Water District

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State facts

Nicknames: The Golden State
Capital: Sacramento
Total area: 163,696 mi²
- Land: 156,002 mi²
- Water: 7,694 mi²
Highest elevation: 14,505 ft (Mount Whitney)
Population 39,250,017 (2016 est)
Admission to the Union: September 9, 1850 (31^st)

State symbols:

Insect: California Dogface Butterfly
Bird: California Valley Quail
Fossil: Saber-toothed cat
Dance: West Coast Swing
Colors: Blue & Gold
Animal: California Grizzly Bear
Flower: California Poppy
Gem: Benitoite
Rock: Serpentine
Fish: California Golden Trout
Songs: I Love You, California
Tree: California Redwood
Mineral: Gold

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