California (U.S. State)

California’s Redwood National and State Parks contain 45% of all remaining old-growth redwood forests in the world!

The California poppy can remain dormant for years during drought, then suddenly bloom in vast numbers after rain in a “super bloom”!

California has more than 420,000 acres of vineyards and produces about 80-90% of all wine made in the United States!

The automatic car wash was invented in California in 1940!

Skateboarding was invented in California in the late 1940s when surfers wanted something to do when the waves were flat!

Mount Shasta in Northern California is considered one of the world’s potentially active volcanoes, having last erupted about 3,200 years ago!

California sea lions can dive up to 900 feet (274 meters) deep and hold their breath for nearly 10 minutes underwater!

The TV show “Baywatch” was filmed on California beaches and at one point was watched by more than 1 billion people worldwide each week!

California has more than 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) of navigable waterways in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, making it a boating paradise!

The name “California” first appeared in a Spanish novel from 1510 as a mythical island paradise!

The California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento has 21 restored locomotives and train cars, with some dating back to 1862!

Mono Lake in California is about 760,000 years old, making it one of the oldest lakes in North America!

The USS Midway Museum in San Diego features an aircraft carrier that was once the largest ship in the world and is now a floating museum!

More Olympic athletes come from California than from any other state in America!

Monarch butterflies migrate to the California coast each winter, with some groves hosting thousands of butterflies per tree!

California’s state marine fish is the garibaldi, a bright orange fish that guards its nest so fiercely it will even try to chase away human divers!

The world’s first Pinkberry frozen yogurt store opened in California in 2005, starting a frozen yogurt craze across the country!

Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispo, California, is a 15-foot-high, 70-foot-long alley where people have been sticking chewed gum since the 1960s!

More than 120 movies and TV shows have been filmed at Vasquez Rocks in California, including Star Trek and The Flintstones!

California grows more than 200 different crops, including almost all the artichokes, walnuts, and 95% of the garlic in the United States!

The first Barbie doll was introduced by California-based Mattel in 1959!

Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, founded in 1928 in Oakland, California, is known for creating the popular Rocky Road flavor, one of the first ice creams with mix-ins like marshmallows and almonds!

More than 2,000 species of plants in California are found nowhere else in the world!

California is home to a butterfly called the “Blue Copper,” which has bright, iridescent blue wings that shine like metal!

The Getty Center in Los Angeles has gardens designed to be viewed from above, creating beautiful patterns visible from the museum’s balconies!

Solvang is a California town that looks like it belongs in Denmark, with traditional Danish buildings, windmills, and pastry shops!

The first Taco Bell restaurant opened in Downey, California in 1962!

The oldest living champion tree in California is “The Bennett Juniper,” which is estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,300 years old!

In the summer, parts of northern California and southern Oregon are home to lava tubes — underground tunnels where lava once flowed that now stay cool even on hot days!

The world-famous San Diego Zoo was founded in 1916 and now has more than 12,000 animals from more than 650 species!

The first Frisbee was inspired by Yale students in the early 1900s, who tossed empty tins from the Frisbie Pie Company for fun! Later, in California, Walter Morrison developed a plastic flying disc, which was sold to Wham-O and officially named the “Frisbee” in 1957.

California has the world’s oldest annual marathon, the Dipsea Race, which has been run every year since 1905 (except during world wars)!

California’s Big Sur coastline has towering cliffs that rise over 1,200 feet (366 meters) above the Pacific Ocean, creating breathtaking views that have inspired famous writers like Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller!

Santa Monica Pier in California has the world’s first solar-powered Ferris wheel, glowing with 174,000 energy-efficient LED lights that can mix up 16.7 million dazzling colors!

Bodega Bay, California, was the filming location for Alfred Hitchcock’s scary movie “The Birds,” and you can still visit many spots shown in the film!

Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland, which opened in 1950, was one of the inspirations for Disneyland, and Walt Disney visited to get ideas before building his park!

Bodie State Historic Park in California is a real ghost town with about 200 buildings still standing in a state of “arrested decay,” kept exactly as they were left when the last residents moved away!

Huntington Beach, California, is known as “Surf City USA” and hosts one of the world’s largest surfing competition, with waves that can be surfed almost every day of the year!

Santa Barbara, California, is called the “American Riviera” because its Mediterranean climate, beautiful beaches, and Spanish-style buildings look like places in Spain, France, and Italy!

Bakersfield, California, is surrounded by oil fields that produce 10% of all the oil in the United States, with oil pumps that look like giant nodding birds!

Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa has a unique L-shaped church and a museum where you can see how the padres and Native Californians lived in the 1700s!

San Jose was California’s first civilian settlement and the state’s first capital city before Sacramento took over!

Palm Springs packs over 50,000 swimming pools and more than 100 golf courses into a desert that gets less than 6 inches (15 cm) of rain a year!

Catalina Island welcomed 14 bison in 1924 for a movie shoot, and today, about 150 of their descendants roam the island — what a wild Hollywood twist!

Pismo Beach, California, is famous for its clams, and the city used to hold a clam festival where people would dig up as many as 5,000 clams in a single day!

Morro Bay in California has a giant 581-foot tall rock sitting right in the harbor that formed over 20 million years ago from an ancient volcano!

The city of Temecula has over 40 wineries and holds an annual balloon festival where more than 40 hot air balloons fill the sky at once!

Orange County, California, got its name from the large orange groves that once flourished there.

Beverly Hills was once lima bean fields before it became famous for luxury stores and movie star homes!

The cable cars in San Francisco, California, are the only moving National Historic Landmark in the United States, and they climb hills that are too steep for buses!