Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the city of San Francisco, San Jose (the third-largest city in California), Sacramento (the state capital), as well as the redwood forests, the northern California coast, the Big Sur coastline area, the Sierra Nevada including Yosemite Valley and Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta (the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range), and t...
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Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the city of San Francisco, San Jose (the third-largest city in California), Sacramento (the state capital), as well as the redwood forests, the northern California coast, the Big Sur coastline area, the Sierra Nevada including Yosemite Valley and Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta (the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range), and the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.
Native Americans arrived in Northern California at least as early as 5,000 to 8,000 BC and perhaps even much before, and successive waves of arrivals led to one of the most densely populated areas of pre-Columbian North America. The arrival of European explorers from the early 1500s to the mid-1700s, did not establish European settlements in Northern California. In 1770, the Spanish mission at Monterey was the first European settlement in the area, followed by other...
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