Portal:California

California
California
State
	State of California
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	Map of the United States with California highlighted

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Welcome to the Portal:California. Such a lovely place.

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California (/ˌkælɪˈfɔːrnjə/) is a state in the Western 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 almost 40 million residents across an area of 163,696 square miles (423,970 km²), it is the largest state by population and third-largest by area.

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. It organized itself and was admitted as the 31st state in 1850 as a free state, following the Compromise of 1850. It never had the status of territory.

The economy of California is the largest of any U.S. state, with an estimated 2024 gross state product of $4.172 trillion as of Q4 2024. It is the world's largest sub-national economy and if it were an independent country, it would be the fourth-largest economy in the world (putting it, as of 2025, behind Germany and ahead of Japan) when ranked by nominal GDP. The state's agricultural industry 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. Hollywood in Los Angeles is the center of the U.S. film industry and one of the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world; profoundly influencing global entertainment since the 1920s. The San Francisco Bay's Silicon Valley is the center of the global technology industry. (Full article...)

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Panning for gold on the Mokelumne River

The California Gold Rush started in January 1848, when gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. As news of the discovery spread, some 300,000 people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. These early gold-seekers, called "Forty-Niners," traveled to California by sailing ship and in covered wagons across the continent, often facing substantial hardship on the trip. Gold worth billions of today's dollars was recovered, leading to great wealth for some; others, however, returned home with little more than they started with. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. San Francisco grew from a tiny hamlet of tents to a boomtown, and roads, churches, schools and other towns were built. A system of laws and a government was created, leading to the admission of California as a state in 1850. New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service and railroads were built. The business of agriculture, California's next major growth field, was started on a wide scale throughout the state. However, the Gold Rush also had negative effects: Native Americans were attacked and pushed off traditional lands, and gold mining caused environmental harm. (Full article...)

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

Image 1The railway station in Sacramento in 1874. (from History of California)
Image 2Map 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 3Francis Drake's 1579 landing in "New Albion" (modern-day Point Reyes); engraving by Theodor De Bry, 1590. (from History of California)
Image 4Portrait 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 5The 1846 Bear Flag Revolt declared the California Republic and prefaced the American conquest of California. (from History of California)
Image 6The Battle of Río San Gabriel, in 1847, was a decisive victory for the American campaign in Alta California. (from History of California)
Image 7Mission Santa Barbara, founded in 1786, was the first mission to be established by Fermín de Lasuén. (from History of California)
Image 8Pacheco Adobe, built 1835 by Salvio Pacheco on Rancho Monte del Diablo. (from History of California)
Image 9The Petaluma Adobe, built by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo in 1836 on Rancho Petaluma. (from History of California)
Image 10Advertisement for sailing to California, c. 1850. (from History of California)
Image 11The 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 12Map 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 13Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, established in 1770, was the headquarters of the Californian mission system from 1797 until 1833. (from History of California)
Image 14Founded 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 15Angustias 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 16Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, founded in 1771 by padres Pedro Benito Cambón and Ángel de la Somera. (from History of California)
Image 17Bilingual English-Spanish sign in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. (from Culture of California)
Image 18Junípero Serra conducting the first mass in Monterey Bay in 1770. (from History of California)
Image 19Depiction of the Donner Party heading west on the California Trail. (from History of California)
Image 20Forces raising the U.S. flag over the Monterey Customhouse following their victory at the Battle of Monterey (from History of California)
Image 21California's first State Capitol building in San Jose, which served as the capital of California 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 22Map of the Butterfield Overland Mail routes through California, c. 1858. (from History of California)
Image 23Joaquín 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 24Depiction of the 1755 revolt of the Mission Indians against padre Luis Jayme at Mission San Diego de Alcalá. (from History of California)
Image 25Depiction of the California hide trade. (from History of California)
Image 26Balthazar, Inhabitant of Northern California, an 1818 portrait of a Miwok man by artist Mikhail Tikhanov. (from History of California)
Image 27The Vallecitos stop of the Butterfield Overland Mail, in Julian, California. (from History of California)
Image 28A Southern Pacific Train at Arcade Depot, Los Angeles, 1891 (from History of California)
Image 29General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo reviewing his troops in Sonoma in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 30Portrait of an "assimilated" Maidu man in Sacramento, 1867. (from History of California)
Image 31Presidio of San Francisco, founded by José Joaquín Moraga in 1776. (from History of California)
Image 32San Francisco harbor, c. 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 33Stanford University Oval (from Culture of California)
Image 34The Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 35The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions. (from History of California)
Image 36Manuel Domínguez built Domínguez Adobe on Rancho San Pedro in 1826. (from History of California)
Image 37Flag of Company A (The California 100) during the U.S. Civil War. (from History of California)
Image 38The 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 39Goldfields in the Sierra Nevada and Shasta Cascade. (from History of California)
Image 40California 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 41The 1835 Manifiesto a la República Mejicana, by José Figueroa, was the first book published in California (from Culture of California)
Image 42Presidio of Santa Barbara. (from Culture of California)
Image 43Poppies, Antelope Valley, a California Impressionist painting by Benjamin Chambers Brown (from Culture of California)
Image 44Between 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 45The Getty Villa (from Culture of California)
Image 46In-N-Out burgers (from Culture of California)
Image 47Mission San Francisco Solano, founded in 1823 by order of Governor Luis Antonio Argüello, was the last Californian mission established. (from History of California)
Image 48The University of California, Berkeley is the flagship school of the University of California system. (from Culture of California)
Image 49Concord Coach no. 251 in Wells Fargo livery in Old Town San Diego. (from History of California)
Image 50"Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California", c. 1850 (from History of California)
Image 51Dividing the Light (2007), a skyspace by James Turrell at Pomona College (from Culture of California)
Image 52While 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 53General 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 54The American capture of San Diego by the USS Cyane in 1846 (from History of California)
Image 55The colonial coat of arms of the Californias, granted by Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of New Spain. (from History of California)
Image 56SS 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 57Juan Bautista de Anza led the 1774-76 Anza Expeditions. (from History of California)
Image 58Gaspar de Portolá served as the first Governor of the Californias and led the famed Portolá expedition of 1769-70. (from History of California)
Image 59Bodega y Quadra led a 1775 expedition along the coast of California into the Pacific Northwest. (from History of California)

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California has become the first American state where there is no majority race, and we're doing just fine. If you look around the room, you can see a microcosm of what we can do in the world [...] You should be hopeful on balance about the future. But it's like any future since the beginning of time – you're going to have to make it.

— Bill Clinton

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Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.

His first book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk. His second book, And the Band Played On, chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic. Despite some controversy surrounding the book in the LGBT community, Shilts was praised for his meticulous documentation of an epidemic that was little-understood at the time. It was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993. His final book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military. (Full article...)
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Perry in 2024

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. She is one of the best-selling music artists in history, having sold over 143 million records worldwide. Perry is known for her influence on pop music and her camp style, being dubbed the "Queen of Camp" by Vogue and Rolling Stone. The world's highest-paid female musician in 2015 and 2018, Billboard named her among the greatest pop stars of the 21st century.

At 16, Perry released a gospel record titled Katy Hudson (2001) under Red Hill Records, which was commercially unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles at 17 to venture into secular music, and later adopted her stage name from her mother's maiden name. She recorded an album while signed to Columbia Records, but was dropped before signing to Capitol Records. Perry rose to fame with One of the Boys (2008), a pop rock record containing her debut single "I Kissed a Girl" and follow-up single "Hot n Cold", which reached number one and three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 respectively. (Full article...)
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Young in 2002

John Watts Young (September 24, 1930 – January 5, 2018) was an American astronaut, naval officer and aviator, test pilot, and aeronautical engineer. He became the 9th person to walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972.

Before becoming an astronaut, Young received his Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and joined the U.S. Navy. After serving at sea during the Korean War he became a naval aviator and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. As a test pilot, he set several world time-to-climb records. Young retired from the Navy in 1976 with the rank of captain. (Full article...)
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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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Caroline Agnes Brady (also known as Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady; October 3, 1905 – November 5, 1980) was an American philologist who specialised in Old English and Old Norse works. Her works included the 1943 book The Legends of Ermanaric, based on her doctoral dissertation, and three influential papers on the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University, among other places.

Brady was born an American citizen in Tientsin, China, and traveled frequently as a child, spending time in Los Angeles, California, British Columbia, and Austin, Texas. She studied in the University of California system, receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees, and her Ph.D. in 1935. She next became an English instructor at that university's College of Agriculture, and worked as an assistant professor of languages and literature at Berkeley from 1941 to 1946. The following three years were spent at the University of Pennsylvania, until, at the end of 1949, Brady moved to teach at Central Oregon Community College; her resignation due to "ill health" was announced a few months later. After being named the 1952–53 Marion Talbot Fellow of the American Association of University Women and writing two articles, Brady's scholarship ceased for a quarter of a century. In 1979, and posthumously in 1983, her final two articles were published. (Full article...)
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Voorhis in 1939

Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis (April 6, 1901 – September 11, 1984) was an American politician and educator from California who served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947. A Democrat, he represented the 12th congressional district in Los Angeles County. He was the first political opponent of Richard M. Nixon, who defeated Voorhis for re-election in 1946 in a campaign cited as an example of Nixon's use of red-baiting during his political rise.

Voorhis was born in Kansas, but the family relocated frequently in his childhood. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University (where he was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa) and a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School. In 1928, he founded the Voorhis School for Boys and became its headmaster. He retained the post into his congressional career. (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 U.S. House speaker and the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of Congress, heading the House Democrats from 2003 to 2023. A member of the House since 1987, Pelosi represents California's 11th congressional district, which includes most of San Francisco. She is the dean of California's congressional delegation.

The daughter of congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., Pelosi was born and raised in Baltimore. She graduated from Trinity College, Washington, in 1962 and married businessman Paul Pelosi the next year. They moved to New York City before settling down in San Francisco with their children. Focused on raising her family, Pelosi entered politics in the 1960s as a volunteer for the Democratic Party. After years of party work, rising to chair the state party, she was first elected to Congress in a 1987 special election. 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. (Full article...)
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Nixon in 1972

Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon (née Ryan; March 16, 1912 – June 22, 1993) was First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974 as the wife of President Richard Nixon. She also served as the second lady of the United States from 1953 to 1961 when her husband was vice president.

Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in Artesia, California, graduating from Excelsior Union High School in Norwalk, California in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon team", Richard and Pat Nixon campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected vice president in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became second lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals, and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the world. (Full article...)
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Oppenheimer in 1944

J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer /ˈɒpənhaɪmər/ OP-ən-hy-mər; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons.

Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained a degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born. After research at other institutions, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was made a full professor in 1936. Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions; work on the theory of positrons, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum field theory; and the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion. With his students, he also made major contributions to astrophysics, including the theory of cosmic ray showers, and the theory of neutron stars and black holes. (Full article...)
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Pauling in the 1940s

Linus Carl Pauling (/ˈpɔːlɪŋ/ PAW-ling; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize. Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.

Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond include the concept of orbital hybridisation and the first accurate scale of electronegativities of the elements. Pauling also worked on the structures of biological molecules, and showed the importance of the alpha helix and beta sheet in protein secondary structure. Pauling's approach combined methods and results from X-ray crystallography, molecular model building, and quantum chemistry. His discoveries inspired the work of Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins on the structure of DNA, which in turn made it possible for geneticists to crack the DNA code of all organisms. (Full article...)
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Simpson in 1990

Orenthal James Simpson (July 9, 1947 – April 10, 2024), also known by his nickname "the Juice", was an American professional football player, actor, and media personality who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills. Simpson is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time, but his success was overshadowed by his criminal trial and controversial acquittal for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

Simpson played college football for the USC Trojans, where he won the Heisman Trophy as a senior, and was selected first overall by the Bills in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. During his nine seasons with the Bills, he received five consecutive Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selections from 1972 to 1976. He also led the league in rushing yards four times, in rushing touchdowns twice, and in points scored in 1975. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, earning him NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP), and is the only NFL player to do so in a 14-game regular season. He holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1. He acquired the nickname "Juice" as a play on "OJ", a common abbreviation for orange juice. After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, he acted in film and television, became a sportscaster, and was a spokesman for a wide variety of products and companies, notably Hertz. He was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. (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...)
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Jackson in 1983

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, his music achievements broke racial barriers in America and made him a dominant figure across the world. Through songs, stages, and fashion, he proliferated visual performance for artists in popular music; popularizing street dance moves including the moonwalk, the robot, and the anti-gravity lean. Jackson is often deemed the greatest entertainer of all time based on his acclaim and records.

The eighth child of the Jackson family, Michael made his public debut in 1964 at age six, as a member of the Jackson 5 (later known as the Jacksons). After signing with Motown in 1968, the band achieved worldwide success with him as its lead singer. Jackson achieved solo stardom with the release of his fifth album Off the Wall (1979). He followed it up with Thriller (1982), the best-selling album of all time, which catapulted him to a rare level of fame, whilst aiding in the popularization of MTV and revolutionizing the music video medium with the videos for its title track along with "Beat It" and "Billie Jean". Jackson furthered his position as a global superstar with Bad (1987), the world's best-selling album of both 1987 and 1988, as well as the first album to produce five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles: "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", and "Dirty Diana". Dangerous (1991) marked a new era for Jackson, lauded as his most artistic and socially conscious album. HIStory (1995) produced "You Are Not Alone", the first song to debut at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. His final album, Invincible, was released in 2001. (Full article...)
Image 14

Norman Clyde in the Sierra Nevada in 1931

Norman Clyde (April 8, 1885 – December 23, 1972) was a mountaineer, mountain guide, freelance writer, nature photographer, and self-trained naturalist. He is well known for achieving over 130 first ascents, many in California's Sierra Nevada and Montana's Glacier National Park. He also set a speed climbing record on California's Mount Shasta in 1923.
The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley has 1467 articles written by Clyde in its archives. (Full article...)
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Martin with the Yankees in 1954

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989) was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager who, in addition to leading other teams, was five times the manager of the New York Yankees. First known as a scrappy infielder who made considerable contributions to the championship Yankee teams of the 1950s, he then built a reputation as a manager who would initially make bad teams good, before ultimately being fired amid dysfunction. In each of his stints with the Yankees he managed them to winning records before being fired by team owner George Steinbrenner or resigning under fire, usually amid a well-publicized scandal such as Martin's involvement in an alcohol-fueled fight.

Martin was born in a working-class section of Berkeley, California. His skill as a baseball player gave him a route out of his home town. Signed by the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks, Martin learned much from Casey Stengel, the man who would manage him both in Oakland and in New York, with whom he enjoyed a close relationship. Martin's spectacular catch of a wind-blown Jackie Robinson popup late in Game Seven of the 1952 World Series saved that series for the Yankees, and he was the hitting star of the 1953 World Series, earning the Most Valuable Player award in the Yankee victory. He missed most of two seasons, 1954 and 1955, after being drafted into the Army, and his abilities never fully returned; the Yankees traded him after a brawl at the Copacabana club in New York during the 1957 season. Martin bitterly resented being traded, and did not speak to Stengel for years, a time during which Martin completed his playing career with various teams. (Full article...)

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... that Cephas L. Bard, the first American physician in Ventura, California, was also the first person to die in the hospital he built there?
... that Los Angeles Rising was put together by two musicians who had been forced to evacuate their homes due to the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles?
... that a California TV station had a cartoon bee as its mascot?
... that it was Caltech experimental physicist Rana X. Adhikari's idea to build a gravitational-wave observatory in India?
... that Frank A. Kimball brought a transcontinental rail terminus to National City, California, in exchange for thousands of acres of land?
... that one of the founders of a public TV station in California gave 92 speeches in 90 days during a fundraising drive?
... that a Chinatown in the logging community of Sugar Pine was intentionally burned down by the Madera Sugar Pine Company in 1922?
... that the California Golden Bears men's basketball team won the 1959 NCAA University Division Basketball Championship Game by a single point over West Virginia?

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Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division/Carol M. Highsmith

Mann's (formerly Grauman's) Chinese Theatre is the ultimate Hollywood tourist attraction, with crowds often jamming the patio to inspect handprints of movie stars. The opening of Grauman's in 1927 was the most spectacular theater opening in film history, 7 April 2005

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Credit: Digon3

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 14th most populous city in the United States, with a 2007 estimated population of 764,976. One of the most densely populated major American cities, San Francisco is part of the much larger San Francisco Bay Area, which is home to approximately 7.2 million people.

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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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California

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Southern California • Los Angeles • San Francisco Bay Area • Santa Barbara County • California State Highways • California County Routes • University of California • California State University

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Subportals

Related portals

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Things you can do

Create Requested California Articles
Help assess articles supported by WikiProject California
Help suggest content for usage in this portal by using the archive links to obtain instructions
Write California-related topics if you see a redlink which is worthy of an article
Cleanup and expand stub-class articles relating to California