Description[]
California, constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted as the 31st state of the union on September 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. 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 conterminous 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 163,695 square miles (423,967 square km). Population (2020) 39,538,223; (2022 est.) 39,029,342.
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—National Anthem of California, "I Love you California" |
Economy[]
California’s economy is the largest of any U.S. state and is surpassed only by a handful of industrialized countries. Financiers in California have been imaginative in seeking and employing capital, and many of the country’s largest banks and corporations are based in the state. In 1965 California supplanted New York as the leading state in the export of manufactured goods. With the development of Silicon Valley in the late 1970s, California became a world leader in the manufacture of computers and electronics. By the end of the 20th century, the state’s economy was attracting highly educated workers from all over the world. Moreover, California has retained its dominance in the aerospace industry (though the industry declined in the 1990s), in the film and television industry, and in agriculture and viticulture.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing[]
Agriculture accounts for less than one-tenth of the state’s income; nevertheless, California produces more than half of the country’s vegetables and fruits. The state’s fields and orchards yield hundreds of agricultural products of astonishing diversity from largely irrigated farmland. Its major cash products are cattle, milk, cotton, and grapes. About half of the farm produce comes from the Central Valley, which is irrigated through a labyrinth of dams, canals, and power and pumping plants. California has suffered from periodic droughts, which have had an impact on agricultural production, and acreage has declined somewhat as more farmland has undergone commercial and residential development. The state’s agricultural supremacy dates from 1947, when its farm production first exceeded that of any other state. A growing season of 9 to 10 months ranks the Fresno, Kern, and Tulare areas among the top in the country in value of farm produce.
Many large landholdings have derived from federal land grants to railroads. Such farms have tended to become agricultural assembly lines with absentee owners, high mechanization and productivity, and persistent labour strife. Most farms specialize in one or two crops: almonds grow north of Sacramento; cotton and forage crops, figs, and grapes are cultivated near Fresno; and in the wet delta, asparagus, tomatoes, rice, safflower, and sugar beets are prominent. Specialization has been enhanced by research at the University of California, Davis; this institution also counsels the California wine industry, which produces about four-fifths of all the wine made in the United States. The citrus industry, almost destroyed in the 1940s by a virus, ranks second to that of Florida in production of oranges. Premium wine grapes grow in the Napa and Sonoma valleys north of San Francisco and in adjacent areas. The Imperial Valley in the Colorado Desert in the extreme south, though smaller in area than the Central Valley, has about 500,000 irrigated acres (200,000 hectares) of farmland.
Other major farming areas include the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, where dates and grapefruit grow, and the Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay region. About one-tenth of California’s workforce is employed in agriculture. The farm labour pool is made up of low-income labourers, including the many migrants and Mexican nationals who cross the border in harvest seasons. Long abused, migrant labourers organized in the late 1960s under the leadership of Cesar Chavez and began lengthy strikes that drew nationwide support in the form of consumer boycotts. Thereafter, however, Chavez’s United Farm Workers union lost much of its membership to the Teamsters Union, which organized the agricultural and industrial labour force to such an extent that California is now one of the most heavily unionized states in the country. California forestlands are both privately and publicly owned, and most public holdings are logged as part of state and federal land-management policies favouring multiple use. California has a significant commercial fishing industry. Seafood from the Pacific Ocean includes tuna, mackerel, sole, squid, and sardine. Trout and salmon are almost entirely farm-raised.
Resources and power[]
Petroleum production grew rapidly after 1895, with oil strikes in the Los Angeles–Long Beach area occurring frequently. California led all states in petroleum production from 1900 to 1936. Reserves have been depleted at a rapid rate, however, and oil and natural gas are now also imported. Nevertheless, petroleum continues to exceed the total of all other minerals in value of production, and more than one-tenth of the country’s oil supply is refined in California. Other mineral production includes natural gas, cement, sand and gravel, borate, soda, and salt. Gold mining is now insignificant, as is the exploitation of other precious metals.
California produces about four-fifths of its energy in state; the remainder is imported mostly from the Southwest (coal plants), as well as from the Pacific Northwest and Canada (hydroelectric power plants). California has hundreds of hydroelectric power plants scattered throughout the state. About one-tenth of California’s electricity comes from renewable resources, including wind and solar power. The majority of the thousands of wind turbines in the state are on “wind farms” in Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco; San Gorgonio Pass, near Palm Springs; and Tehachapi, south of Bakersfield. There are solar thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert. The state has become a world leader in the development of renewable forms of energy of all kinds.
Services, labour, and taxation[]
Services are the dominant economic sector in California. Tourism is a consistent source of income. More than one-fourth of the state’s land area is preserved as recreational areas, national seashores, or wildlife refuges. Along the Pacific coast, about two-fifths of the shoreline is accessible and is visited by an estimated 50 million people each year. Redwood National Park has preserved some 100,000 acres (44,000 hectares) of majestic redwood trees extending for nearly 40 miles (65 km) along the Redwood Highway near Crescent City. Among the more than 250 units of the state park system is Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, in the Colorado Desert; running 54 miles (90 km) north-south and containing some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares), it is the largest continuous state park in the United States. There are also more than 5,000 city, county, and special district parks, including the 4-mile- (6-km-) long Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Theme parks, including Disneyland and SeaWorld, are also major tourist attractions.
Government and society[]
Constitutional framework[]
California is governed under a constitution that was framed in 1878–79, a period of rampant graft. It has been revised several times. Amendments instituted by Gov. Hiram Johnson in 1911 included provisions for voter initiative of and referendum on legislation, the recall of elected officials (used to oust a sitting governor in 2003), the direct primary, woman suffrage, and a unique system that allowed candidates to run in primaries of opposing political parties. Before a series of deletions began in 1966, it had grown to be one of the world’s longest governmental constitutions. Since 1962, revisions to the constitution could be made by voters without calling a convention, and most general ballots now contain dozens of propositions on issues that have included tax rates, affirmative action, bilingual education, and same-sex marriage. The methods under which primary elections are conducted in the state also have been subject to a number of ballot initiatives, including one in 2010 that created a system that calls for the two top vote getters in a primary, irrespective of party affiliation, to advance to the general election. The state government and local governments have also been increasingly subject to such initiatives, particularly in planning and zoning decisions and in tax issues.
The state’s chief executive is the governor, who is elected by universal suffrage to a four-year term; a governor may serve a maximum of two terms. Other state executive officers also are elected to four-year terms and are subject to term limits. Members of more than 30 boards and commissions are appointed by the governor. The legislature comprises the Senate, with 40 members, and the Assembly, with 80 members. Legislative dominance is held by populous southern California at the expense of rural areas. The judicial system has traditionally consisted of five levels: the seven-member Supreme Court, district courts of appeal, and superior, municipal, and justice courts. Superior courts have been the major trial courts, whereas the more numerous municipal districts hear lesser matters. In 1998 voters approved a proposition that allowed judges in each county to unify their superior and municipal courts into a single superior court with overarching jurisdiction, subject to the approval of a majority of superior and municipal court judges within that county. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the counties had unified their trial courts.
All federal military services have major facilities in California, affecting both the social and the economic life of the state. Recruit training is the major role of naval and Marine corps bases in San Diego. Camp Pendleton, a Marine base, encompasses the last large undeveloped area along the southern California coast. Air Force activity centres on the Vandenberg base on the central coast and on various other air commands, including remote test facilities in the Mojave Desert. The climate and sparse settlement of the Mojave Desert have made it an ideal setting for aviation and ordnance testing. Long airstrips at Palmdale and at Edwards Air Force Base are important for the testing of new aircraft and for projects of the U.S. space program. Federal cuts in the 1990s forced numerous military base closings and generally devastated the defense and aerospace industries of California. The industries recovered somewhat in the early 21st century with increased military spending, especially for the Iraq War.
Health and welfare[]
California long has been considered a liberal state in the extent of its health and welfare statutes. California’s medical-research facilities lead the country in several branches of medicine, notably oncology, immunology, and gerontology. State benefits offer aid to families with dependent children, to those with disabilities, and to senior citizens.
Education of California[]
California is oriented toward tax-supported public education. The two-year junior or community college was introduced in California in 1907, and there are now more than 100 such colleges. Four-year state colleges and the University of California system complete the public higher-education structure. The University Extension system operates throughout the state. More than one-tenth of California schoolchildren and a slightly higher percentage of college-age students attend private schools.
According to a master plan that attempts to avoid overlapping roles in the complex system of public colleges and universities, the top one-third of high school graduates are eligible to enroll at one of the campuses of the University of California: Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, Riverside, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Irvine, Santa Cruz, and San Diego. The campuses at Santa Cruz and San Diego were established on variations of the Oxford University system of numerous small independent colleges sharing limited central facilities or services. The original campus at Berkeley was founded in 1855 and has remained one of the most prestigious academic communities in the country. The California State University, with numerous branches—including Fresno State University; San Francisco State University; California State University, Fullerton; and California State University, Long Beach—also draws from among the top one-third of high school graduates. High school graduates from the lower two-thirds of their classes attend two-year colleges and often are able to transfer at the end of that period to one of the four-year campuses. California also has many prestigious private higher-educational institutions, among them Stanford University in Palo Alto, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Mills College in Oakland, the Claremont Colleges, California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
Cultural life[]
California’s culture is marked by widespread public involvement with the arts and enthusiasm for cultural trappings as symbols of achievement, often in the form of lavish expenditures to erect galleries, museums, and concert halls.
The arts[]
San Francisco has produced such painters as David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn. Los Angeles has been more successful as a marketplace for art, with a thriving colony of galleries along La Cienega Boulevard. Carmel, Big Sur, Ojai, and Sausalito have harboured communities of practitioners of diverse arts. Early writers associated with California came from outside the state: Bret Harte, born in New York; Mark Twain, in Missouri; Joaquin Miller, in Indiana; and Ambrose Bierce, in Ohio. But the San Francisco of the Gold Rush days provided an eager audience for their writing, as it did for theatre and music. There followed a line of writers who came as close to establishing a regional tradition as have artists in any medium. Jack London, chronicler of men amid frontier violence, was born in San Francisco.
California-born Frank Norris and Upton Sinclair opposed the social ills of their times in a foreshadowing of the later work of John Steinbeck and, to a lesser degree, of William Saroyan, both of whom were also native Californians. The Scottish naturalist John Muir, the progenitor of a school of environmental writers, extolled the state’s natural wonders. Robinson Jeffers, who lived in California much of his life, was the state’s most renowned poet. Poets connected with the San Francisco Beat movement include Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, and William Everson. An influx of literary figures (both Americans and European expatriates) as screenwriters into Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s established little in the way of regional cultural tradition, and the California milieu became instead a favourite target of satire in such novels as Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, and in works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Budd Schulberg, and Ross Macdonald, as well as in the hard-boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain.