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How Many Miles Across Is California
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Pacific States And Territories. Sheep Ranche Description. [area, 158.360 Square Miles. Population [1880). 864,686estimated Population (1883), 1.000.000. I. Situation And Extent. Situation. — California, The Largest And Mostpopulous Of The Pacific
California is one of the founding states of the United States. It was admitted as the 31st state of the Union on September 9, 1850, and was the most populous state in the United States until the early 1960s. No version of the origin of the name California is fully accepted, but there is widespread support for the claim that it derives from an early 16th-century Spanish novel.
(“The Adventure of Esplandián”) describes an island paradise full of gold and precious stones called California. The influence of Spanish settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries is clearly seen in California’s architecture and place names. Its capital is Sacramento.
California is bordered by the US state of Oregon to the north, the states of Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. California is a land of surprising physical contrasts, from the rainy northern coast to the arid Colorado Desert in the south, from the Mediterranean-like central and southern coasts to the volcanic highlands in the northeast. Of the 48 contiguous states, both the highest and lowest points are in the state of California; Mount Whitney and Death Valley respectively. The first is the terminal peak of the Sierra Nevada, one of the largest mountain ranges in North America.
The fluid nature of the state’s social, economic, and political life—shaped largely by the influx of people from other states and countries—has made California a laboratory in which new ways of life have been tested for centuries. California’s population, concentrated mostly along the coast, is the most urban in the United States; More than three-quarters of the state’s population lives in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego metropolitan areas. Despite urbanization and industrial land loss, California still leads the nation in agricultural production. About half of the state’s land is federally owned. National parks located throughout the state are dedicated to the preservation of nature and natural resources. The area is 163,695 square miles (423,967 km²). Population (2020) 39, 538, 223; (2022 estimate) 39,029,342.
Golden Gate Bridge
In the center of California is the Central Valley, which is 450 miles (725 km) from the center of the state and forms a trough between the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east. The valley is the agricultural center of the state. Its only outlet is the delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow into San Francisco Bay. The valley is bordered by the Cascade Range to the northeast and the Klamath Mountains to the northwest. Further north, the terrain is rugged and densely forested; It becomes wetter along the coast and drier and barren in the northeast. To the south, the Central Valley is lined by transverse ranges, especially the Tehachapi Mountains, which are considered the dividing wall between southern and central California.
Most of Eastern California is desert. The sparsely populated northeastern corner of the state consists of volcanic plateaus as well as arid plains and mountains. In the east-central region is the Trans-Sierra Desert, which stretches along the extreme eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range and includes part of the vast interstate Great Basin and Range Region. The Trans-Sierra Desert ranges from 2,000 to 7,400 feet (600 to 2,300 m) above sea level. Its largest city is in the Owens Valley, which was fertile farmland until groundwater flow was diverted to Los Angeles by a series of canals built in 1908-13.
The Sierra Nevada rises west of the Trans-Sierra Desert. The eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada are thin, dropping about 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in 10 miles (16 km) near Owens Lake. To the west, the mountain range slopes toward the foothills of the Central Valley, which includes the San Joaquin valley and the Sacramento River. From a towering wall near Lawson Peak in the north, the Sierra Nevada extends 430 miles (700 km) south to the foothills of Los Angeles. Besides Mount Whitney (4,418 m above sea level), 10 other peaks in the Sierra Nevada exceed 4,200 m in elevation. East-West roads are few but many. Some occur at altitudes above 9,000 feet (2,700 m). There are three national parks in the Sierra Nevada: Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite. The latter, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, rises from the purple foothills of Mother Lode Country and encompasses the snow-capped valleys of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers. There are waterfalls and granite domes in the valley.
In the southeast, the Mojave Desert, covering over 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers), accounts for one-sixth of California’s land area. It is characterized by large basins and eroded mountains, fault blocks, and burned surfaces, many of which are more than 2,000 feet (600 m) above sea level. Plants include evergreen creosote bush, yucca, saltbush, broomrape, anselia, cottonwood, and mesquite. There are juniper and pine trees above.
Why Even Hurricane Hilary Couldn’t Solve California’s Long Term Drought Crisis
Just south of the Mojave Desert is the lower Colorado Desert, an extension of the Sonoran Desert that begins in the Coachella Valley. The Colorado Desert descends into the Imperial Valley along the Mexican border. The valley is a highly irrigated agricultural area known for its winter crops. More than 4,000 square miles (10,500 km2) of desert are below sea level, including the 300-square-mile (800 km2) Salton Sea, which in 1905 became a lake with no outlet. 07 when the nearby Colorado River overflowed its channel.
Almost 1,000 miles (1,800 km) of California’s coast are mountainous; the most striking are the Santa Lucia Mountain Range south of San Francisco, where high cliffs rise to nearly 240 meters (800 feet). . Three of the coast’s major natural harbors, San Diego, San Francisco, and Eureka, have low mountain bays. The Coast Mountains, composed of many indistinct chains, are approximately 20 to 40 miles (30 to 65 km) wide and 2,000 to 8,000 feet (600 to 2,400 m) high.
Southern California is densely populated along the coastal plain and in valleys approximately 10 to 60 miles (16 to 100 km) inland. The population is declining along the north coast of the Tehachapi Mountains, but the central coastal region has been growing rapidly since the 1990s. The populated coastline around San Francisco Bay gives way to the less developed northern shore, where logging and fishing villages line the rivers and streams flowing off the coast. It is home to coast redwood forests and Redwood National Park, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.
The 800-mile-long (1,300 km) San Andreas Fault is a major fault line that cuts through most of California. Tectonic movement along faults caused large-scale earthquakes, including the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. The Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Gabriel Fault Zone in metropolitan Los Angeles have produced several large earthquakes, although they were the epicenter of the devastating earthquake. Northridge, a suburb of Los Angeles, occurred in 1994 along one of the major secondary faults of the San Andreas. Separate fault systems in the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains are also tectonically active.
U.s. States Ranked By Area
Southern California and desert regions are chronically water-scarce, but heavy rainfall and snowmelt cause winter flooding along North Coast rivers. A complex system of dams and aqueducts transports water from north to south, but it is not without objections from those who see the export of water from their regions as an obstacle to future development or a threat to ecological balance. On the Arizona border, the Colorado River drains water from the river into the deserts and mountains of Southern California to serve the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The California State Water Project, begun in 1960, is the largest water transfer system ever built. It is designed to carry water daily from the Feather River (a tributary of the Sacramento River) in north-central California to communities south to the Mexican border.
The largest lake in the Sierra Nevada is Lake Tahoe, located on the California-Nevada border at an elevation of 6,229 feet (1,899 m). a mountain range
