Talk:Northern California

The Bay Area isn't Northern California.

I hate to break it to you all, but NorCal is everything from Sacramento and North. The whole landscape changes, there are no major cities, and the culture changes. We don't want to have the bay area idiots lumped into our great part of the state, thanks. 2601:200:4400:74B0:980B:F470:82FF:2033 (talk) 19:48, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

YES. ALSO SACRAMENTO IS ALSO NOT NORCAL AND NEITHER IS ANY PART OF THE CENTRAL VALLEY. 47.208.4.74 (talk) 07:46, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

When people divide California into TWO PIECES then the Bay Area and Sacramento are certainly in the northern piece. Binksternet (talk) 14:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Adding to what @Binksternet already said — San Francisco, San José, and Gilroy are specifically named by the state as part of the Northern California section of its High-Speed Rail System.

• California, State of (2024-08-20). "Northern California". California High Speed Rail. Retrieved 2025-01-09.

FelisObscura (talk) 23:32, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

"Popularly"

There's no cite for the claim that Popularly, though, "Northern California" usually refers to the state's northernmost 48 counties.

And it's pretty implausible. Tulare, Kings, Inyo, Fresno counties? I don't think those are "popularly" taken to be NorCal. They're Central or Eastern California, not Northern. (The Bay Area is a separate discussion — it's true that it's very distinct from the far north of the state, but on the other hand it's what a lot of people specifically mean when they say Northern California. Sacramento, or at least its burbs, feel more like Central California than either definition of Northern despite the high latitude, but again we can save that for later.)

We shouldn't be promulgating this uncited and I think inaccurate claim about the "popular" meaning. --Trovatore (talk) 19:28, 30 December 2023 (UTC) My personal boundaries would be something like "draw a line from Big Sur to Mono Lake and take everything north of that line, but then cut out the Central Valley south of Sacramento". I'm not proposing that should go in the article, but I do think it's more plausible than what's there currently. --Trovatore (talk) 22:29, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

See previous discussion at Talk:Southern_California#The_dividing_line_near_the_36th_parallel.

The nearly straight combination of county lines cutting across California at roughly latitude 35°45'N is the popular division. It's a neat division, easy to see and understand. On the other hand, the geographic division goes from Point Conception at the Pacific through the Transverse Ranges including Tejon Summit and Tehachapi Summit, following all the highest points of the mountain ranges, cutting northeast at Tehachapi to hit Nevada around Mount Patterson north of Mono Lake. That line is curvy and complex, more difficult for folks to wrap their head around, but useful for historic travel difficulties back before highways, and as a biological study boundary where the weather changes drastically.

The US Department of the Interior in 1987 set latitude 35°47'N as the border between north and south California.[1] That's where the counties of San Luis Obispo and Monterey meet, and where the not-quite-straight east–west county line starts. A career journalist named Mike McPhate writes about this line in his blog.[2] The county of San Luis Obispo is commonly included in popular travel guides of SoCal, while Montery is not.[3][4] Many more examples can be found putting the western point at the Monterey–San Luis Obispo county boundary. The rest of that straight line was set in 1859 as the Pico Act.[5] You can blame Andrés Pico. Binksternet (talk) 00:44, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

With either version, it sounds like you want to put the whole Central Valley in NorCal. No no no. Sorry. That is not the "popular" definition, whatever you might find in the Interior Dept literature. (San Luis Obispo vs Monterey is about right, but you can't just draw the line straight east -- it needs to angle north and cut off most if not all of the Central Valley.) --Trovatore (talk) 04:08, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Can you point to supporting publications for the angle north boundary? Because your description does not fit with the bill that was passed by a majority of Californians in 1859 when they decided to split California into two parts, using a perfectly straight east–west line set at six standard parallels south of Mount Diablo. Binksternet (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I hope you can see the difference between "there's an act from 1859" and "this is the popular usage". Saying that Fresno is "popularly" considered part of NorCal is pretty out there. --Trovatore (talk) 21:27, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Ah, so it's about Fresno. Unfortunately for you, Fresno does not appear in either of the two main definitions of Southern California. Fresno is north of the Pico Act line, and it's north of the Tehachapi range. The city of Bakersfield is a better example of confusion as it is south of the Pico Act line but northwest of the mountain ranges.

Remember that Northern California is two-thirds of the state, and includes the main part of Central California where Fresno is found. Binksternet (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not about Fresno per se. That's just an example. I agree that Fresno is also not Southern California.

I think the problem is you're trying to insist on dividing the state into only two regions. But there is no such "popular" division. --Trovatore (talk) 22:42, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Historically, the state was to be divided into two regions in 1859 because the southern residents were paying taxes but not seeing any state money come back to their neighborhood. The two-region borderline was always the Tehachapi/Sierra mountain ranges until modern highways enabled travelers to get through the passes. But in 1859, the state was divided in two by legislation, using a straight line starting at the southern border of Monterey County.

The Google Ngram says that "Northern California" is about one fifth as popular a search term as "Southern California", and that "Central California" is about one tenth as popular as "Northern California". This tells us that "Central California" is a very weak term that is used by few. It's also very poorly defined. Binksternet (talk) 06:04, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Not the point. This article is not called "Northern and Southern California", or "Northern, Southern, and Central California". It's just called "Northern California". And the claim that the popular use of "Northern California" includes (for example) Fresno is, I think, just false. We don't have to figure out what Fresno should be called instead — it's just not "Northern". --Trovatore (talk) 06:38, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what you think your sources are, but the division of California into two parts has been very well established for many decades, while the division into three parts is recent, fragmented, not widely adopted, and ill-defined. The two parts of California have always been one-third south and two-thirds north. Whatever the "central" portion might be (it varies) is traditionally included in the northern part. Binksternet (talk) 06:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

None of which, even if true, seems to support the claim about popular usage (which I see you've recently modified).

In any case, of course these regions are ill-defined. That should be obvious. The "Pico Act" is irrelevant here; Northern California in the sense readers are going to expect the article to treat has no official definition of any kind. --Trovatore (talk) 07:08, 12 January 2025 (UTC)