California State

Introduction

 

 

 

• California.

 

• California coastline, Big Sur.

constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted as the 31st state of the Union on Sept. 9, 1850, and by the early 1960s it was the most populous U.S. state. No version of the origin of California's name has been fully accepted, but there is wide support for the contention that it derived from an early 16th-century Spanish novel, Las sergas de Esplandián (“The Adventures of Esplandián”), that described a paradisiacal island full of gold and precious stones called California. The influence of the Spanish settlers of the 18th and 19th centuries is evident in California's architecture and place-names. The capital is Sacramento.

 

 

• The diverse landscapes of California from Mount Whitney to Death Valley.

 

• Sand dunes at Death Valley National Monument, California.

California is bounded by the U.S. state of Oregon to the north, by the states of Nevada and Arizona to the east; by the Mexican state of Baja California to the south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. From the rainy northern coast to the parched Colorado Desert in the south, and from the Mediterranean-like central and southern littoral to the volcanic plateau of the far northeast, California is a land of stunning physical contrasts. Both the highest and lowest points in the 48 coterminous states are in the state of California—Mount Whitney and Death Valley, respectively. The former is the culminating summit of the Sierra Nevada, one of the major mountain ranges of North America.The fluid nature of the state's social, economic, and political life—shaped so largely by the influx of people from other states and countries—has for centuries made California a laboratory for testing new modes of living. California's population, concentrated mostly along the coast, is the most urban in the United States, with more than three-fourths of the state's people living in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego metropolitan areas. Despite its urbanization and the loss of land to industry, California still leads the country in agricultural production. About one-half of the state's land is federally owned. National parks located throughout the state are devoted to the preservation of nature and natural resources. Area 158,633 square miles (410,858 square km). Pop. (2000) 33,871,648; (2007 est.) 36,553,215.

 

Land