THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA 

Principal Cities

The extensive Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County metropolitan area had a population estimated to be 15.6 million in 1997, or nearly one-half of the entire population of California. The city of Los Angeles proper had 3,597,556 residents (1998 estimate). Founded in 1781 as a Spanish pueblo, Los Angeles, by the time of its bicentennial year in 1981, passed Chicago as the nation's second largest city. The metropolitan area includes numerous communities with large populations in addition to Los Angeles. Long Beach, the biggest besides Los Angeles, had 430,905 inhabitants in 1998. Other major cities included Anaheim (295,153), Riverside (262,140), San Bernardino (186,402), Torrance (137,533), Pomona (135,659), Pasadena (134,587), and Ventura (98,366). The area is a leading manufacturing and entertainment center.

      

The entire San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose metropolitan region held a population estimated to be 6.7 million in 1997. San Francisco, the “city by the Golden Gate,” was California's largest city from gold rush days in the 1850s until the early 1920s when Los Angeles passed it in population. The city holds an influence in the United States in finance, international trade, and culture far greater than other cities of similar size. San Francisco city and county, which are geographically the same, contained 745,774 people in 1998. San Jose had 861,284 inhabitants, and Oakland had 365,874. San Jose is one of the most important manufacturing centers in the state and lies at the heart of Silicon Valley. Oakland is an important port and manufacturing city. Also in the metropolitan region is Berkeley, seat of the University of California, which had 108,101 residents in 1998.
 
San Diego, with a population of 1,220,666 in 1998, is the hub of an extensive metropolitan area, which was estimated in 1997 to hold 2.7 million inhabitants. The city is an important naval base and commercial port, and it serves as the major trade center of the Imperial Valley to the east. Sacramento, the state capital, had a population of 404,168 in 1998. In addition to serving as an administrative center, it is a commercial and manufacturing city. Fresno, with a population of 398,133, and the smaller cities of Stockton (240,143) and Bakersfield (210,284) are also food-processing centers in the Central Valley. The largest cities in the state north of Sacramento are Redding, a tourist center for the mountain region with 77,944 inhabitants; Chico, a commercial and service center for a large almond- and fruit-growing region, with 46,915 people; and Eureka, a seaport and fishing and lumbering center of 25,600 inhabitants.