List of municipalities in California Facts for Kids

Map of the United States with California highlighted

California is a huge state located in the western part of the United States. It's the state with the most people living in it, and it's the third biggest state by land area, after Alaska and Texas. In 2020, about 39.5 million people lived in California, and it covers about 155,779 square miles (403,466 square kilometers) of land.

Long ago, many different Native American groups lived in California. In the 1500s and 1600s, explorers from Spain and Russia started visiting and settling the area. Spain set up its first mission in California in 1769, in a place now called San Diego.

After 1848, the famous California Gold Rush brought lots of attention to California from all over the world. Over the years, the growth of the movie industry in Los Angeles, high tech companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, along with tourism and agriculture (farming), helped California's economy grow to be one of the largest in the world. If California were its own country, its economy would be the fifth largest globally!

California is divided into 58 areas called counties. Within these counties, there are 483 cities and towns. One special place, San Francisco, is both a city and a county at the same time. In California, there's no legal difference between a "city" and a "town," so municipalities can use either name. They can be set up with their own special rules (a charter municipality) or follow state laws (a general-law municipality).

The very first city to be officially formed in California was Sacramento on February 27, 1850. The newest city is Mountain House, which became a city on July 1, 2024. Eight cities were already official before California even became a state on September 9, 1850.

According to the 2020 United States Census, the biggest city in California by both population and land area is Los Angeles. It has about 3.9 million residents and covers about 469.49 square miles (1,216.0 square kilometers). The smallest city by population is Amador City, with only 200 people. It's also the smallest by land area, covering just 0.31 square miles (0.80 square kilometers).