Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta (the second-highest peak in the Cascade Range after Mount Rainier in Washington), and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.

Northern California is also home to Silicon Valley, the global headquarters for some of the most powerful tech and Internet-related companies in the world, including Meta, Apple, Google, and Nvidia.

[5] California experienced a population boom during its gold rush (1848–1855), bringing more than 300,000 new residents, with very few of these settling in the southern part of the state.

This geographical barrier curves from Point Conception at the Pacific Ocean eastward through the Transverse Ranges including Mount Pinos and Tejon Pass, continuing through the Tehachapi Mountains including Tehachapi Pass, then cutting northward through the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range to Mount Patterson and the Nevada border.

Congress was too divided with tensions which would soon break out into the American Civil War, and despite the efforts of Senator Milton Latham, the bill died.

The interior region north of Sacramento metropolitan area is referred to by locals as the Northstate, consisting of about 20 counties.

In science, advances range from being the first to isolate and name fourteen transuranic chemical elements, to breakthroughs in microchip technology.

Cultural contributions include the works of Ansel Adams, George Lucas, and Clint Eastwood, as well as beatniks, the Summer of Love, winemaking, the cradle of the international environmental movement, and the open, casual workplace first popularized in the Silicon Valley dot-com boom and now widely in use around the world.

Other examples of innovation across diverse fields range from Genentech (development and commercialization of genetic engineering) to CrossFit as a pioneer in extreme human fitness and training.

In 1579, northern California was visited by the English explorer Sir Francis Drake who landed north of today's San Francisco and claimed the area for England.

In 1812, the Russian state-sponsored Russian-American Company established Fort Ross, a fur trading outpost on the coast of today's Sonoma County.

Fort Ross was the southernmost Russian settlement, located some 60 miles (97 km) north of Spanish colonies in San Francisco.

In 1839, the settlement was abandoned due to its inability to meet resource demands, and the increasing Mexican and American presence in the region.

The Mexican Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians) in these settlements primarily traded cattle hides and tallow with American and European merchant vessels.

Chief among these was John Sutter, a European immigrant from Switzerland, who was granted 48,827 acres (197.60 km2) centered on the area of today's Sacramento.

[19]: 263–273  Also in 1841, an overland exploratory party of the United States Exploring Expedition came down the Siskiyou Trail from the Pacific Northwest.

On June 14, 1846, some 30 non-Mexican settlers, mostly Americans, staged a revolt and seized the small Mexican garrison in Sonoma.

[22] News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 people coming to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

[23][24] New roads, churches, and schools were built, and new towns sprung up, aided in part by the development of new methods of transportation such as steamships which came into regular service and railroads which now connected the coasts.

Pro-slavery politicians initially attempted to permanently divide northern and southern California at 36 degrees, 30 minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise.

[25] The decades following the Gold Rush brought dramatic expansion to northern California, both in population and economically – particularly in agriculture.

The completion of the First transcontinental railroad in 1869, with its terminus in Sacramento (and then later, Oakland), meant that northern California's agricultural produce (and some manufactured goods) could now be shipped economically to the rest of the United States.

Northern California's economy is noted for being the de facto world leader in high-tech industry (software, semiconductor/micro-electronics, biotechnology and medical devices/instruments), as well as being known for clean power, biomedical, government, and finance.

Northern California has a warm or mild to cool climate, in which the Sierra mountains gets snow in the late fall through winter and occasionally into spring.

[30][31] The largest percentage increase outside the Gold Rush era (52%) came during the 1940s, as the region was the destination of many post-War veterans and their families, attracted by the greatly expanding industrial base and (often) by their time stationed in northern California during World War II.