California Fun Facts
Information About California, California Geography, and California Schools

The capital of California is Sacramento and the largest city in California is Los Angeles. Los Angeles is also known as “The City of Angels.” The abbreviation for California is CA. Residents of California are known as Californians.

“The Golden State” is a nickname often associated with California. California is bordered by Oregon, Nevada, and California. The Pacific Ocean runs along the California coast.

The state song is “I Love You, California.” The state symbols of California are its state flower, the California poppy, and its state bird, the California Valley Quail. The Redwood is the state tree.

California ranks third in population. Though it is well known for movie making, entertainment and the tourism industry, California was once extremely popular because of the mining business. Though it is not so big now, there was once a huge obsession with mining for gold in California.

California’s state motto is “Eureka,” which is Greek for "I have found it."

There were 5,686,198 K12 students in the California public schools in 1996. Out of those students 491,159 were first grade students. There were also 248,818 k12 public school teachers in the California public schools system. There were a total of 7,984 California public schools in 1996. (Source: IES National Center for Education Statistics)