California quick facts
- Mount Whitney (14,505 ft) and Badwater Basin (282 ft below sea level) are the highest and lowest points in the lower 48 states — and only 84 miles apart.
- California is the only place on Earth with the biggest tree (a giant sequoia), the tallest tree (a coast redwood) and the oldest tree (a bristlecone pine).
- Death Valley recorded 134 °F in 1913 — the hottest air temperature ever officially measured anywhere on the planet.
- If California were a country it would have the world’s 4th largest economy, ahead of Japan.
- The first European to reach California, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, was Spanish, not Portuguese. Documents found in 2015 proved it.
You could wake up in a snowdrift on the highest mountain in the lower 48 states and have breakfast. Drive for a couple of hours, and you could be standing in the hottest place on Earth by lunchtime. That valley sits below the level of the sea. You would not have left California to do it.
That is the thing about this state. It is long enough, and strange enough, to hold a rainforest and a desert. It has the oldest trees on the planet and the newest technology companies, all inside one border.
California in ten seconds
| Nickname | The Golden State |
| Capital | Sacramento, which surprises almost everyone |
| Became a state | September 9, 1850, the 31st |
| People | About 39.5 million, more than any other state |
| Size | 163,696 square miles, third biggest after Alaska and Texas |
| Motto | “Eureka!”, ancient Greek for “I found it!” |
| Highest point | Mount Whitney, 14,505 feet |
| Lowest point | Badwater Basin, 282 feet below the sea |
| National parks | Nine, more than any other state |
The mountain and the hole in the ground
The strangest thing about California is its shape, or rather what that shape manages to contain. Mount Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48 states at 14,505 feet. Badwater Basin is the lowest point in all of North America, sitting 282 feet below sea level. The two of them are only 84 miles apart, which is closer than many people live from their grandparents.
Stand on the summit of Whitney and you are in snow, gasping a bit because the air is thin. Look south-east and there is a salt flat so low that the ocean would have to climb 282 feet uphill just to reach it.
Be careful with this one, though, because a great many websites get it wrong. Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous United States, meaning the 48 states that are all joined together. Alaska is not joined on, and Alaska has Denali, which reaches 20,310 feet and is therefore nearly 6,000 feet taller. If a fact sheet tells you Whitney is the highest mountain in America, it has quietly dropped a word that matters.
How hot does Death Valley actually get?
On July 10, 1913, a thermometer at Furnace Creek in Death Valley read 134 °F (56.7 °C). That is still the hottest air temperature ever officially recorded anywhere on the planet. To put it in perspective, a bath so hot you cannot sit in it is around 104 °F. Death Valley was thirty degrees hotter than that, and it was not water, it was the air, everywhere, all day long.
There is a catch. Some scientists think the 1913 reading was faulty, because the equipment of the time was not especially reliable. So if you want a figure nobody argues about, Death Valley reached 130 °F in 2020 and did it again in 2021. Whichever number you use, it still wins.
A trick question about the coastline
How long is California’s coast? You will find two answers, and the odd part is that both of them are correct.
Draw a smooth line down the edge of the state and you get 840 miles. Walk it instead, following every bay and rock and river mouth, and you get 3,427 miles. It is the same coast either way. The second measurement simply uses a much smaller ruler. Mathematicians call this the coastline paradox. The finer you measure, the longer the answer becomes. An ant attempting to measure the California coast would never finish the job.
California holds all three world tree records
Nowhere else on Earth can make this claim. The biggest tree, the tallest tree and the oldest tree are all in California. They are three different species in three different places.
The biggest is a giant sequoia called General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park. It stands about 275 feet high, roughly as tall as a 25-storey building. Its largest single branch is thicker than most whole trees you have ever seen. Visitors constantly try to photograph the whole thing from ground level and it simply cannot be done.
The tallest is a coast redwood called Hyperion, at over 380 feet, taller than the Statue of Liberty. Its exact location is a secret, and the rangers will not tell anyone. Enough visitors trampling the soil around its roots could kill it. There is a world-record tree out there and nobody is allowed to know where it stands.
The oldest are the bristlecone pines of the White Mountains. They are small, twisted trees that look half dead, and they are over 4,800 years old. When Egyptian workers began stacking the blocks of the Great Pyramid, these trees had already been growing for two centuries. They are growing still.
People mix up redwoods and sequoias endlessly. Here is the rule that sticks. Redwoods are the tall ones, and they live in the coastal fog. Sequoias are the wide ones, and they live up in the mountains.
California Record-Breakers Match
- Mount Whitney — Highest point in the lower 48 states
- Badwater Basin — Lowest point in North America
- Furnace Creek, Death Valley — Hottest air temperature ever officially recorded
- General Sherman — Biggest tree on Earth
- Hyperion — Tallest tree on Earth
- Bristlecone pines — Oldest trees on Earth
California is named after a place that never existed
Around 1510, a Spanish writer called Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo published an adventure novel. In it he invented an island named California, ruled by a warrior queen called Calafia, where the cliffs were made of solid gold. All of it was made up, and the book was the blockbuster of its day, which meant Spanish sailors had read it.
In the 1530s, explorers pushed up the Pacific coast and found a long strip of land they believed was an island. Somebody remembered the story and said the name aloud, and it stuck. They soon worked out that it was not an island at all. By then, though, the name had settled, and nobody was going to change it. A state of 39 million people is named after somebody’s fantasy novel, which is a little like a country deciding to call itself Narnia.
Why the Golden State?
There are four reasons, and the pleasing part is that all four are true at once. There was the gold itself, found in 1848, which built the state almost overnight. There are the wild golden poppies. They bloom so thickly each spring that whole hillsides turn orange, and the blooms have been photographed from space. There is the grass, which dries out every summer and turns the landscape pale gold. The state really does change colour with the seasons. And gold is one of the two official state colours, alongside blue.
It became the official nickname in 1968. One warning, though: California is not the Sunshine State. That belongs to Florida, and mixing the two up is one of the most common errors on the internet.
January 24, 1848, the day everything changed
A carpenter named James Marshall was building a sawmill on a river for a man called John Sutter. He glanced into the water channel and saw something shiny. Sutter begged him to keep quiet about it, which went about as well as you would expect.
Within two years, roughly 300,000 people had dropped everything and headed for California. They came from across America, and from China, Mexico, Chile, Ireland and Australia. They sold their farms and walked across deserts. Some sailed all the way around South America, a voyage of five months, just to dig about in a river. They were nicknamed forty-niners after 1849, the busiest year, which is exactly where the San Francisco 49ers football team took its name. San Francisco itself grew from about 1,000 people to 25,000 in two years.
Most of them found nothing at all. The people who reliably got rich were the ones selling shovels, boots and jeans to the miners.
There is a much darker half to this story and it should not be skipped over. Native peoples had lived in California for at least 13,000 years. Around 300,000 of them spoke roughly 100 different languages, which made it one of the most diverse places on Earth. The Gold Rush destroyed that world. Native Californians were driven off their land and killed. Their population collapsed from about 150,000 in 1848 to around 30,000 by 1870. In 2019 the Governor of California formally apologised for it. Any honest account of the Gold Rush has to carry both halves.
How California became a state
California has belonged to four different groups in turn. Native peoples were there for at least 13,000 years. Spain arrived in 1769 and began building a chain of 21 missions up the coast. Mexico took over in 1821 after winning independence from Spain. The United States gained the territory in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War.
Then something unusual happened. A new place would normally spend years as a “territory” first. But so many people had poured in during the Gold Rush that California skipped that stage entirely. It became the 31st state on September 9, 1850, only two years after the gold was found.
One correction worth knowing. The first European to reach California was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542. Older books describe him as Portuguese. In 2015, researchers found five 16th-century documents showing he was Spanish, born in Palma del Río. None of them described him as Portuguese. California officially changed the record in 2018, so any page still calling him Portuguese has not been updated in about a decade.
The flag with the bear that no longer exists
In June 1846, a small group of American settlers at Sonoma decided to break away from Mexico. They needed a flag, so they made one. They cut up a petticoat for the cloth and painted it with blackberry juice and brick dust. A man named William Todd drew the grizzly bear. He happened to be the nephew of Mary Todd Lincoln, later the First Lady. Underneath the bear they wrote “California Republic”.
That republic lasted 25 days, which is shorter than most summer holidays. People liked the flag, though. In 1911 it became the official state flag, and it flies over California to this day.
Which brings us to the saddest fact on this page. The California grizzly on that flag is extinct. The last one was killed in 1922 and the last confirmed sighting was in 1924. California chose an animal to represent itself and then lost it completely within a single human lifetime. The bear on the modern flag was drawn from a real grizzly named Monarch, who spent his final years in an enclosure in Golden Gate Park.
California History Timeline
- First Californians Native peoples live across California, speaking about 100 different languages.
- An invented island A Spanish adventure novel gives a made-up island the name California.
- Cabrillo arrives Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sails into San Diego Bay.
- Spanish missions Spain begins building a chain of 21 missions up the coast.
- Mexico takes over Mexico wins independence from Spain and takes control of California.
- The Bear Flag Settlers at Sonoma raise a grizzly bear flag and declare the California Republic.
- Gold! James Marshall spots gold at John Sutter's sawmill.
- Statehood California becomes the 31st US state.
Who lives in California
About 39.5 million people, which is more than any other state and works out at roughly one in every eight Americans. The figure that startles people most is that Los Angeles County on its own has more residents than 40 entire US states.
California is what statisticians call a majority-minority state. It sounds like a riddle, but it simply means no single group makes up more than half the population. Hispanic or Latino residents are the largest group at about 41%, roughly 16 million people. White residents who are not Hispanic make up about 34%. Asian residents are about 16%, the largest Asian American population of any state. Black residents are about 5%, and Native American, Pacific Islander and multiracial Californians make up the rest.
More than 200 languages are spoken across the state. Walk a few blocks in Los Angeles and you might hear six of them before you reach the corner.
The biggest cities, and one surprise
- Los Angeles, 3,898,747, the second-biggest city in America.
- San Diego, 1,386,932, famous zoo and famously reliable weather.
- San Jose, 1,013,240, sitting at the heart of Silicon Valley.
- San Francisco, 873,965.
- Fresno, 542,107, the farming capital of the Central Valley.
- Sacramento, 524,943, the state capital.
San Francisco being only fourth catches most people out. It is one of the best-known cities in the world, but it is physically tiny. It is crammed onto about 47 square miles at the tip of a peninsula, with the ocean on one side and the bay on the other. It ran out of room a long time ago and never had anywhere to grow.
Look in your kitchen, a lot of it came from California
California grows about half of all the fruit, nuts and vegetables produced in the United States. In 2024 its farms turned out $61.2 billion worth of food. It was the first time the figure had passed $60 billion. Milk led the list at $8.6 billion. Next came almonds at $5.7 billion, grapes at $5.6 billion and cattle at nearly $5 billion. More than 400 different crops grow across the state.
Two of those numbers are worth trying on a grown-up. California grows roughly 80% of the world’s almonds. Not America’s, the world’s. Almost every almond you have eaten probably came from there. It also grows nearly all of America’s processing tomatoes. So a great deal of the ketchup you eat began life in one flat, hot valley in the middle of the state.
California: Fact or Myth?
- California is the biggest US state by area.
- During the Gold Rush, San Francisco grew from about 1,000 people to about 25,000 in two years.
- Redwoods are the wide trees of the mountains, and sequoias are the tall trees of the foggy coast.
- The California grizzly bear on the state flag is now extinct.
- California poppies can bloom so thickly that the orange hillsides have been photographed from space.
- Most people who rushed to California for gold ended up rich.
- California grows nearly all of America's processing tomatoes, the kind used to make ketchup.
- The California Republic, the country the Bear Flag was first made for, lasted 25 years.
If California were its own country
It would be the fourth richest on Earth. California’s economy is worth about $4.1 trillion, and only the whole United States, China and Germany produce more. In 2025 it passed Japan to take fourth place, meaning a single state now out-earns a country of 124 million people.
Two places explain a great deal of that. Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco, is home to Apple, Google, Meta and Nvidia. It takes its name from silicon, the element inside every computer chip. Hollywood, over in Los Angeles, has been making films since about 1910. The filmmakers moved there for a very practical reason. The sunshine was reliable enough to shoot outdoors all year round.
Los Angeles is slowly sliding toward San Francisco
California sits on a crack in the planet called the San Andreas Fault. It runs about 800 miles through the state and marks the line where two enormous slabs of the Earth’s crust grind past each other. They move roughly two inches a year, about as fast as your fingernails grow. That does not sound like much, until you remember that it never stops. Los Angeles is on one slab and San Francisco is on the other. In around 15 million years, they will be next-door neighbours.
California’s state symbols
| Symbol | What it is | Since |
|---|---|---|
| Flower | California poppy | 1903 |
| Bird | California quail | 1931 |
| Tree | Coast redwood and giant sequoia | 1937 / 1953 |
| Animal | California grizzly bear, now extinct | 1953 |
| Motto | “Eureka!” | 1963 |
| Mineral | Gold | 1965 |
| Fossil | Saber-toothed cat | 1973 |
| Gemstone | Benitoite, found almost nowhere else on Earth | 1985 |
| Fabric | Denim, invented in San Francisco | 2016 |
| Dinosaur | Augustynolophus, a duck-billed dinosaur found only in California | 2017 |
| Sport | Surfing | 2018 |
California is one of very few states with an official fabric and an official sport at all. They turned out to be denim and surfing, which tells you most of what you need to know about the place.
California State Symbols Match
- California poppy — State flower
- California quail — State bird
- California grizzly bear — State animal
- Eureka! — State motto
- Benitoite — State gemstone
- Denim — State fabric
- Surfing — State sport
Nine “facts” about California that are wrong
These appear on hundreds of websites. Some were honest mistakes, and some were true once and quietly stopped being true while nobody was looking.
- “Mount Whitney is the highest point in the USA.” It is the highest in the lower 48. Denali in Alaska is nearly 6,000 feet taller.
- “California has the fifth biggest economy in the world.” Fourth, since it passed Japan in 2025.
- “California has more people than Canada.” Not any more. Canada passed 41.6 million while California sits at 39.5 million, and the two swapped places around 2023.
- “California is the Sunshine State.” That is Florida.
- “Cabrillo was Portuguese.” Spanish, according to documents found in 2015 and officially recognised in 2018.
- “California has 482 cities.” It has had 483 since Mountain House incorporated in July 2024.
- “Disneyland is the most visited theme park in the world.” Second. Magic Kingdom in Florida is first.
- “The Golden Gate Bridge is gold.” It is orange. The official colour is International Orange, chosen so ships could pick it out in heavy fog.
- “According to the 2017 census…” There was no 2017 census. The United States counts everybody once every ten years.
Places worth knowing
- Yosemite, with its enormous granite cliffs and Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America at 2,425 feet. For a few days each February, the setting sun catches one particular waterfall at exactly the right angle. It glows orange like lava, and people call it the firefall.
- Death Valley, the hottest, driest and lowest national park. Rocks here appear to travel across the desert floor on their own, leaving trails behind them. Scientists eventually solved that one: thin sheets of ice and a push of wind.
- La Brea Tar Pits, where sticky natural asphalt in the middle of Los Angeles has been trapping animals for 50,000 years. Mammoths and saber-toothed cats walked in and never walked out. Palaeontologists are still pulling fossils from the ground there today, right beside a busy road.
- Alcatraz, the island prison in San Francisco Bay. Escaping meant swimming through freezing water and fierce currents. In 1962, three men vanished from their cells and were never seen again.
- The Hollywood Sign, built in 1923 as an advertisement for a housing development. It originally read HOLLYWOODLAND, and the last four letters were simply allowed to fall off.
- Disneyland, in Anaheim, Orange County, which opened on July 17, 1955.
Twelve facts worth remembering
- Blue jeans were invented in San Francisco in 1873, for gold miners whose ordinary trousers kept tearing.
- The fortune cookie was made popular in California rather than in China.
- California has a volcano. Lassen Peak erupted in 1917 and is still considered active.
- San Francisco’s cable cars are the only moving National Historic Landmark in the country.
- The state contains both a desert and a rainforest, less than 400 miles apart.
- Yosemite was protected in 1864, before Yellowstone. It was the first land the United States government set aside to protect for people to enjoy.
- The official state fabric is denim and the official state sport is surfing.
- The animal on the state flag has been extinct for over a century.
- California has nine national parks and no other state has more than eight.
- Bristlecone pines in the White Mountains were already alive before the pyramids were built.
- Los Angeles County has more people living in it than 40 US states.
- One valley in California grows nearly all of America’s ketchup tomatoes.
Did you know? California has the biggest tree on Earth, the tallest tree on Earth, and the oldest tree on Earth. All three. No other place has even two.
California Map Challenge
Try it
Find Mount Whitney and Badwater Basin on a map. They are only 84 miles apart, but one is 14,505 feet up and the other is 282 feet below the sea. Work out the difference between them — the answer is bigger than most mountains.
Knowledge check
Mount Whitney is the highest point in which part of the United States?
Show answer
The lower 48 — the states that are all joined together. Denali in Alaska is nearly 6,000 feet higher.
Why does California’s coastline have two different lengths?
Show answer
Because it depends on the ruler. A smooth line down the coast measures 840 miles, but following every bay and rock gives 3,427 miles. This is called the coastline paradox.
Frequently asked questions
What is the capital of California?
The capital of California is Sacramento, and it has been since 1854. Most people guess Los Angeles or San Francisco, but neither is the capital.
When did California become a state?
California became the 31st US state on September 9, 1850. It skipped the usual stage as a territory because the Gold Rush had filled it with people so quickly.
How many people live in California?
About 39.5 million people live in California (January 2025 estimate), more than in any other US state. That is roughly one in every eight Americans.
Why is California called the Golden State?
California is called the Golden State because of the 1848 Gold Rush, the golden poppies that bloom each spring and the hills that turn gold each summer. It has been the official nickname since 1968.
Is California the biggest US state?
California has more people than any other US state, but it is only third by area, at 163,696 square miles. Alaska and Texas are both larger.
Is Mount Whitney the highest mountain in the United States?
No. Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet, is the highest point in the lower 48 states. Denali in Alaska, at 20,310 feet, is the highest mountain in the United States.
What is California famous for?
California is famous for Hollywood films, Silicon Valley, the Gold Rush, surfing and giant trees. It also grows about half of the fruit, nuts and vegetables produced in the United States.
Sources
- California Department of Finance: population estimates — the 39.5 million figure, as of January 2025.
- Office of the Governor of California — the $4.1 trillion economy and the move to fourth in the world, using IMF and BEA data.
- California Department of Food and Agriculture — the 2024 farm production figures.
- US National Park Service: the General Sherman Tree — the largest tree on Earth by volume.
- NOAA: how long is the US shoreline? — why California has two different coastline lengths.
- California State Library: state symbols — the symbols table and its adoption dates.
California Final Challenge
- Where does the name California come from?
- Which of these is NOT one of the reasons California is called the Golden State?
- Why is San Francisco's football team called the 49ers?
- The article says any honest account of the Gold Rush has to carry both halves. What are the two halves?
- Why did California skip the usual territory stage and become a state so quickly?
- California is a majority-minority state. What does that mean?
- San Francisco is famous around the world. Why is it only California's fourth-biggest city?
- Roughly how much of the world's almonds does California grow?
- Where does Silicon Valley get its name?
- Why are Los Angeles and San Francisco slowly getting closer together?
- Mount Whitney's summit is 14,505 feet above sea level. Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level. How much higher is the summit than Badwater?
- Why did early filmmakers move to Hollywood, in Los Angeles?
