A guide to the map of Northern California

California (sometimes abbreviated to ‘CA’) is the world-renowned US state, which is the third largest by land-size and by far the most populous. It comprises a great diversity of different sights and attractions including great national parks, mountain ranges and the spiritual centrepiece of the movie industry – Hollywood. In this article, I give you a guide to the map of Northern California.

What is defined as Northern California

Two definitions The term ‘Northern California’ is not a formal geographic term and thus definitions of what this includes vary. Technically, the dividing line falls at
37 degrees latitude, encompassing the settlements of Santa Cruz, Gilroy and Dos Palos. Another popular dividing line is the Tehachapi mountain range near Santa Barbara. Popular definition By popular definition, however, the line lies further south on the straight, Southern boundaries of the counties of Monterey, Kings, Tulare and Inyo and encompasses those counties and the other 44 counties to the North. This is the definition I will use in this article.

Guide to a map of California

West A
CA map reveals that, to the West of Northern California lies the upper half of California’s infamous ‘Golden Coast’ which runs all of the 770-miles up California’s Western’s seaboard. Hills Running nearly all the way down the West coast of Northern California is the ‘coastal range’ of hills. This range is briefly cut-off by San Francisco Bay - an almost lagooned bay at the delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, upon which lies the great city of San Francisco and its metropolitan area.
Rivers
These rivers flow from The Great Valley, which covers South and central Northern California and is sub-divided into the Sacramento river valley (with titular river running down to the South) and the San Joaquin river valley to its South East. The East To the East, lies the Sierra Nevada mountain range which at points rises to over 4,000 metres. This also provides the source of many of the two aforementioned rivers’ tributaries. National parks
In these mountains (and their foothills), lie many spectacular national parks such as Inyo, Plumas, world-famous Yosemite and Sequoia – home to the titular tallest trees on Earth. North To the North of the area, essentially wrapping round the Great Valley, lie the Modoc Plateau, Cascade Range and Klamath Mountains, rising up to at around 2,000m in altitude. The Cascade Range forms part of the Pacific Ring of Fire as it contains several volcanoes. Cities The area also contains 11 of the megaregions of the United States (large metropolitan areas), including the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento.