San Francisco          Los Angeles          Big Sur          Monterey          Stanford           Silicon Valley       Hearst Castle

California  is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Geographically located in the western part of the U.S., California is bordered by the other U.S. states of Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, and Arizona to the southeast. California shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California to the south and the Pacific Ocean is on the state’s western coastline. The state capital is Sacramento. Los Angeles is California’s most populous city, and the country’s second largest after New York City. The state also has the nation’s most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County.

California’s diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east; and from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state’s center. Because of California’s location along the Pacific Ring of Fire, about 37,000 earthquakes are recorded each year, but most are too small to be felt.

If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world and the 35th most populous. It is also regarded as a global trendsetter in both popular culture and politics, and is the birthplace of the film industry, the hippie counterculture, the Internet, and the personal computer, among others. Fifty-eight percent of the state’s economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business Services. The San Francisco Bay Area has the nation’s highest median household income by metropolitan area, and is the headquarters of three of the world’s largest 20 firms by revenue, Chevron, Apple, and McKesson. Although it only accounts for 1.5 percent of the state’s economy, California’s agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state.