Port Costa is a census-designated place (CDP) in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The population was 190 at the 2010 census.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 0.16 square miles (0.41 km2), all of it land. Port Costa is surrounded by rolling hills grazed by cattle and managed by East Bay Regional Park District. Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline stretches from Crockett through Port Costa and to Martinez. Big Bull Valley Creek runs along McEwen Road into a historic reservoir just above the town, then it runs in an underground pipe culvert beneath the town to the Carquinez Strait.
Port Costa was founded in 1879 as a landing for the railroad ferry Solano, owned and operated by the Central Pacific Railroad. This put Port Costa on the main route of the transcontinental railroad. The Solano, later joined by the Contra Costa, carried entire trains across the Carquinez Strait from Benicia to Port Costa, from whence they continued on to the Oakland Pier. For a time, it was also the United States' busiest wheat-shipping port and had a reputation as a colorful, sometimes violent community.
California is a 1927 American Western silent film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and written by Marian Ainslee, Ruth Cummings and Frank Davis. The film stars Tim McCoy, Dorothy Sebastian, Marc McDermott, Frank Currier and Fred Warren. The film was released on May 7, 1927, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
341 California is an asteroid belonging to the Flora family in the Main Belt, that has an unusually high albedo.
It was discovered by Max Wolf on September 25, 1892 in Heidelberg.
California is a place name used by three North American states: in the United States by the state of California, and in Mexico by the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur. Collectively, these three areas constitute the region formerly referred to as Las Californias. The name California is shared by many other places in other parts of the world whose names derive from the original. The name "California" was applied to the territory now known as the state of California by one or more Spanish explorers in the 16th century and was probably a reference to a mythical land described in a popular novel of the time: Las Sergas de Esplandián. Several other origins have been suggested for the word "California", including Spanish, Latin, South Asian, and Aboriginal American origins. All of these are disputed.
California originally referred to the entire region composed of the Baja California peninsula now known as Mexican Baja California and Baja California Sur, and upper mainland now known as the U.S. states of California and parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming. After Mexico's independence from Spain, the upper territory became the Alta California province. In even earlier times, the boundaries of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean coastlines were only partially explored and California was shown on early maps as an island. The Sea of Cortez is also known as the Gulf of California.