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REALTOR®
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To find a
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California borders the Pacific Ocean.
California covers an area of great physical diversity in which
uplands dominate the landscape. The mountains, hills, ridges,
and peaks of California flank the coastline, rise to nearly
15,000 feet in the towering Sierra Nevada, encircle the great
fertile basin of the Central Valley, and separate the desert
into innumerable basins. However, despite the physical
dominance and economic value of the uplands, California’s
urban areas and economic production are concentrated in the
valleys and lowlands, such as in the huge metropolitan region
centered on Los Angeles, the state’s largest and the nation’s
second largest city. Manufacturing, agriculture, and related
activities are the principal sources of income. They are based
in large part on the state’s wealth of natural resources,
its productive farmlands, its large and highly skilled labor
force, and its ability to market its output both at home and
abroad.
California’s size, complexity, and
economic productivity make it preeminently a state of
superlatives. It has the lowest point in the country, in Death
Valley, and the highest U.S. peak outside of Alaska, Mount
Whitney. Among the 50 states it has the greatest number of
national parks and national forests, and the only stands of
redwoods and giant sequoias. Its annual farm output is greater
in value than that of any other state, and it leads the rest
of the nation in the production of many crops. It is the
leading state in volume of annual construction and
manufacturing. California has more people than any other state
and more automobiles, more civil aircraft, and more students
enrolled in universities and colleges.
Between the late 1940s and late 1980s the
rate of growth and actual growth of California’s population
and economy were phenomenal compared with other states.
However, this growth also gave rise to, or aggravated, several
major problems that now face Californians. Much of the growth
occurred in the dry south where water shortages must be offset
by vast, expensive public projects delivering water from the
wetter north. Urban centers extended outward into good
farmland, forever removing it from food production. In
addition, as population continues to increase, California is
faced with the problem of providing its inhabitants with more
schools, hospitals, water, highways, recreational facilities,
and other services.
The name California was first used to
designate the region by the Spanish expedition led by Juan
Rodríguez Cabrillo, as it sailed northward along the coast
from Mexico in 1542. The name itself was probably derived from
a popular Spanish novel published in 1510 in which a fictional
island paradise named California was described. The state’s
official nickname is the Golden State, referring to the gold
rush, which played a central role in California’s entry into
the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. The
nickname also suggests the state’s golden fields and
sunshine.
California, the third
largest state in the Union, has a total area of 158,869 square
miles, including 2,674 square miles of inland water and 222
square miles of coastal waters over which it has jurisdiction.
The state is roughly rectangular in shape, although the
southern two-thirds bends in a dogleg toward the east. It has
a maximum distance north to south of 654 miles and an
east-to-west extent of 587 miles, although even locations
along the state’s eastern border are less than about 220
miles from the ocean. California’s mean elevation is about
2,900 feet. |