National California Day

Facts AAbout National California Day

California Is One of the World’s Major Biodiversity Hotspots

California is recognized as one of just 36 global biodiversity hotspots, containing more native plant and animal species than any other U.S. state, with especially high numbers of species found nowhere else on Earth.

This biological richness is driven by its varied climate zones, complex topography, and long, isolated mountain and coastal systems, but it is also under pressure from habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change.  

A Single State That Helps Feed an Entire Country

California consistently ranks as the top agricultural producer in the United States, with farms and ranches generating around $59 billion in cash receipts in 2023 and producing more than one third of the nation’s vegetables and about two thirds of its fruits and nuts.

This output depends heavily on irrigation in the Central Valley, where intensive farming has transformed what was once a vast wetland and grassland mosaic into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.  

The Central Valley: A Geological Basin Turned Food Engine

California’s Central Valley is a 400‑mile‑long structural basin formed by tectonic processes and filled over millions of years with sediments eroded from the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges.

Once dominated by seasonal wetlands and grasslands, it now hosts some of the most productive farmland on Earth, but that transformation has also led to the loss of more than 90 percent of the valley’s original wetlands and significant declines in native fish and bird habitat.

San Andreas Fault Shapes California’s Landscape and Risk

The San Andreas Fault is a 750‑mile transform boundary between the Pacific and North American plates that helps define California’s distinctive topography, from coastal ranges to inland basins.

This active fault system accommodates much of the region’s horizontal plate motion, and its long history of major earthquakes, such as the 1906 San Francisco event, continues to influence building codes, infrastructure planning, and seismic monitoring across the state.

California’s Population Is Majority People of Color and Highly Foreign‑Born

California is one of the most diverse societies in the United States, with people of color making up about two thirds of the population and foreign‑born residents accounting for roughly 26 percent, the highest share of any state.

This demographic profile reflects successive waves of migration from Latin America, Asia, and other regions and has helped make the state a national bellwether on multilingual education, immigrant labor policy, and voting rights.  

More Than 200 Languages Are Spoken Across the State

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, more than 40 percent of Californians speak a language other than English at home, and residents report speaking over 200 distinct languages.

Spanish is by far the most common, but large communities also use Chinese languages, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Armenian, Persian, and many Indigenous and smaller world languages, shaping everything from school programs to media, courts, and health services.

Silicon Valley Grew from Defense Contracts to Global Tech Hub

The region now known as Silicon Valley emerged in the mid‑20th century around Stanford University, where policies encouraging faculty entrepreneurship and early federal defense and space contracts helped incubate firms like Hewlett‑Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor.

That combination of research universities, venture capital, and military‑funded electronics work laid the groundwork for later computer and internet giants, turning a largely agricultural area into a global center of innovation.