r/geography • u/G_Marius_the_jabroni • 24d ago
It is shocking how big California’s Central Valley really is. (Image credit: ratkabratka) Discussion
I knew it was kind of big, but damn, it really is massive. Most maps I see I kind of glance over it not paying much attention to it. I always thought it was like a 50-75 mile long by 10-15 miles wide valley, but that thing is freaking 450 miles (720 km) in length x 40-60 miles (64-97 km) wide & covers approximately 18,000 sq miles (47,000 sq km). And that beautiful black alluvial soil underneath the land as a result of all the nutrients flowing down from the Sierras, combined with a hot climate ideal for year-round agriculture??? What a jackpot geographical feature.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
California has the dopest geography in the Lower 48.
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u/Syringmineae 24d ago
I love the idea of people traveling across the plains to get to California. Like, legit go through some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth (like, Death Valley!) to end up in paradise.
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u/Lexitech_ 24d ago
Pre-Industrial Los Angeles was 100% paradise on earth. Imagine making that last trek through the San Gabriels or the high desert and seeing the coast appear in front of you. Must’ve been surreal.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
Before they paved over all the wetlands & channelized the creeks and rivers... such a travesty.
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u/Lexitech_ 24d ago edited 24d ago
And oil rigs. They’re not as apparent anymore but late 1800’s LA was just oil rigs as far as the eye could see.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
El Segundo. So named because it was Chevron(? *Standard Oil, now Chevron)'s second plant after the one in Richmond in the Bay Area (at least, pretty sure the Richmond one was first haha), aka El Primero.
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u/Psychometrika 24d ago
I pulled over to ask where we was at
His index finger, he tipped up his hat
El Segundo, he said, my name is Pedro
If you need directions, I'll tell you pronto
Need a civilization, some sort of reservation
He said a mile south, there's a fast food station
Thanks, señor, as I started the motor
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u/IDKmenombre 24d ago
This is Huntington beach California. Orange county.
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u/LittleWhiteBoots 23d ago
There’s a reason Huntington Beach High School’s mascot is the Oilers!
The pumpjacks used to scare me as a kid.
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u/noideawhatoput2 23d ago
Maybe not as many but they’re still in LA but hidden in fake buildings.
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u/speed32 24d ago
And some of these rigs are still there hiding in buildings and various structures
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u/MyGoodOldFriend 23d ago
Crazy that people don’t know that there’s still plenty of oil drilling in the middle of LA.
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u/nutdo1 24d ago
I mean they were channelized because of flood risk. See the 1938 LA Flood and Great Flood of 1862.
In the map above, you can actually see how the entire Greater LA Area is a drainage basin for the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains. The channels are needed to protect Southern California from another catastrophic flood.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
Yes indeed, but that's why you don't build in low-lying floodplains! Look up the Olmsted Brothers/Olmsted-Bartholomew plan from 1930 and dream about what could have been.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
The funny story of Palmdale is that some settlers traveled across the plains, the Rockies, the Great Basin, etc. and were gassed when they finally crossed the Mohave Desert. There, they saw Joshua Trees, which they thought were coastal palm trees. So assuming they were near the coast, they posted up there instead of crossing the San Gabes and finishing the journey to paradise haha.
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u/Charlie_Warlie 23d ago
Read the accounts of the Donner Party and wew. They decided to take a pathway through the great salt desert in Utah. Here's what a short account on PBS said.
The 87 members of the Donner party began their treacherous trek across the Great Salt Lake Desert. There they encountered conditions they'd never imagined: by day, searing heat that turned the sand into bubbling stew that swallowed their wagons, and at night, frigid winds that blew sand, suffocating their oxen. Five days and eighty miles later, they stumbled out of the Salt Desert filled with anguish and dismay.
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u/willk95 24d ago
I was going to say I'd like to see a similar relief map for my state (Massachusetts) but the elevation would be much less impressive than this map
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u/-Void-King- 24d ago
I would like to see one for my state too, but I feel that Florida being a pancake would be pretty boring too
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u/Fantastic-Airline-92 24d ago
Is there a good link to these maps?
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u/-Void-King- 24d ago
I sadly have no idea. My best advice would be going to Google and hoping whatever you wanna see has been mapped.
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u/scarydrew 24d ago
There's a spot called Mount Tuleyome on the south end of Lake Berryessa where extremely thick fog will waterfall over the foothills and it looks absolutely surreal.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
Badass. Same thing happens driving up and down 280, usually around sunset as the evening fog rolls in from the ocean over the Santa Cruz mountains.
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u/BridgeOverRiverRMB 24d ago
And on the drive into San Francisco when you're coming in from Marin.
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u/DeadInternetTheorist 23d ago
The US rolled a nat 20 on geography and resources, and California is like the US's US.
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u/nixnaij 24d ago
I’m from Hawaii and I’ve always been amused by how the term “lower 48” excludes the Southern most state.
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u/BenjaminWah 24d ago
Because it's an Alaskan term.
Hawaii wasn't a state before it was widely used, even during territorial time.
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u/couldbutwont 24d ago
The whole west coast tbh. WA in particular I think has some of the most incredible landscapes on earth
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u/AlfredoThayerMahan 23d ago
I think by dint of size California has us beat but it’s close.
Steamboat rock, the Cascades, Columbia River Gorge, The Olympics, San Juans, etc are all very striking.
That being said Yosemite, Death Valley, Mt Shasta, Joshua Tree, and Tahoe (among others) are top tier.
Depends on what you like.
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u/Wut23456 24d ago edited 24d ago
Arguably the dopest geography of any region in the world. Madagascar and Hawaii come close
Edit: Forgot about Papua New Guinea for some reason
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u/nattywb 24d ago
Agreed. I was originally going to say North America, but I didn't want to offend the Alaska fanboys haha.
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u/party_faust 24d ago
yea problem with Alaska is that it's primarily tundra/taiga, so those are your two main flavours of scenery.
Cali's a tad more dynamic
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u/nattywb 24d ago
The fjords, glaciers, and the Alaska Range/Denali though. Not to mention that totally sweet Aleutian island chain extending towards Russia.
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u/ForeSkinWrinkle 24d ago
Welp, guess I’m off to read Steinbeck.
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u/nattywb 24d ago
The intro to East of Eden...
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u/Inevitable_Bowl_9203 24d ago
Or that entire chapter in Grapes about coming into the Central Valley down 58 from Tehachapi.
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u/UltraDarkseid 24d ago edited 24d ago
It's massive. there are people I know (Fresno/Clovis area) who've never seen the far end of it their whole lives. We're considered the middle of the valley, but Redding is as far from me as NYC is from Charlottesville, Virginia.
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u/Geezersteez 24d ago
So about 5-6hrs?
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u/Mexishould 24d ago
Ya but 5-6 hrs through the Central Valley
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u/StevenEveral Political Geography 23d ago
Redding to the grapevine is about 6ish hours. If you ever drive it south of Sacramento, sweet mother of god stay on 99. I once took I-5 through the Central Valley from LA up to the Bay Area and it was the most boring drive of my life.
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u/Powerful_Artist 23d ago
Drive through Nebraska on I-80, something like 7+ hours from east to west, and youll reconsider how boring the i5 corridor is through central valley. Trust me, central valley is far from boring compared to stretches of the great plains like Nebraska. Or even driving through the desert of Nevada, way more boring imo.
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u/RockKillsKid 23d ago
At least you get that constant smell of cows and cow shit to keep you awake...
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u/singlenutwonder 22d ago
My first job was at the McDonald’s on Trinity Parkway in Stockton. For those unfamiliar, that’s basically the furthest northern part of Stockton where you go from city to farmland, so it was absolutely lovely working the drive thru window and getting the whiff of cow shit every time you opened it. Especially when it was cold, it was so much stronger when it was cold
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u/CommonMaterialist 22d ago
I’ve made the trip from the Bay Area to Southern Oregon taking I-5 many times through my life and yeah, the stretch of the interstate through the valley floor is rough.
Though, I recently drove from Southern Oregon to the midwest and man, the drive through Nebraska on the I-80 is something else.
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u/Electrical_Quote3653 24d ago
Strange, though. After living in and traveling around California for 20 years, something about it feels small. Like, when you are in the Central Valley, you can see (as I recall) the hills and mountains on both sides. Then, it's like, well just over the hills to the west is the ocean. Feels small. Does that make sense?
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u/Glum-System-7422 24d ago
Totally! I never think about how big it is because you can always see mountains
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u/Electrical_Quote3653 24d ago
Right? Contrast that with being back in, say, rural New York, and you have low rolling hills that seem to go forever, without any indication of where the next landmark is.
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u/elevencharles 24d ago
Having grown up on the west coast, I always get super disoriented when I visit my girlfriend’s family in New England because I’m used to there always being a mountain range visible.
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u/John_Mayer_Lover 24d ago
Every time I’m in Massachusetts visiting my wife’s family I just look at her and say, I have no idea what direction we’re heading. It honestly kinda bothers me. Lived in coastal California my entire life. Been on the central coast for 23 years. We have the ocean, very distinctive volcanic peaks, mountains, valleys, passes. I always know exactly where I am and what direction I’m facing.
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u/That_honda_guy 23d ago
lol!! Fr!!! I only know East and west because of the mountains. I’m a CV Native. But it’s baffling because once outside of the mountains it’s uncharted territory for me..
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u/chinaexpatthrowaway 24d ago
Or better yet on the Great Plains, when there's absolutely nothing blocking your view, and you still see absolutely nothing but sky in the distance.
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u/Glum-System-7422 24d ago
Part of what makes the movie/show Fargo so scary is that whenever someone runs away, it’s so flat that they’re always very visible. It freaks me out. You shouldn’t be able to see that far lmao
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u/aurorasearching 23d ago
When I lived in Lubbock, Texas for a little while the two jokes were that it’s so flat “you can stand on a penny and see Dallas” and “you can watch your dog run away for 3 days.”
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u/Drill1 24d ago
Stockton to El Cento +/10 hours or Crescent City about 8. Just East West is short.
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u/biscuts99 24d ago
Everyone hates on Bakersfield but I loved actually getting to see the mountains when there. Fresno always had too much smog.
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u/EdgePunk311 24d ago
When the sky is clear after a solid rain it’s absolutely beautiful and stunning landscapes
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u/bcbill 24d ago
Ive never been in the Central Valley when it’s clear enough to see the mountains on both sides other than right around the mouth(?) of the valley near Tejon pass. Too much smog and/or smoke.
It’s always felt like a huge liminal space to me.
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u/OptatusCleary 24d ago
Living in the Central Valley, near Fresno, I can see both sides often enough. The hills to the west are always a bit of a surprise though.
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u/SexnMeatloaf 24d ago
A clear blue sky day right after a rain storm can be magical here, especially in the Winter when there’s snow on the Sierra’s. I always have the Diablo range in view but it’s striking when it’s clear.
I will also say, some of the most beautiful sunsets you’ll ever see happen in the valley.
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u/For_The_Sail_Of_It 24d ago
I’ve never seen a California sunset more beautiful than those I’ve seen in Sacramento. I’ve only seen about 5 there during 3 trips through the decades, and each one brought about a feeling of wonder that reminded me of seeing Yosemite valley for the first time.
Only bright side of the smog settling there. 😅
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u/SmoovSamurai 23d ago
From Sac, you can see the Sutter Buttes to the North, Donner pass and the Sierra to the east, Mount Diablo to SW, and the coastal range to the immediate west. On clear winter days, seeing the snow caps back dropping the city heading east on 80 is really something.
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u/Tsujigiri 23d ago
I'm oddly with you on this. I moved here 40 years ago and there's some subtle bleakness here that I've never been able to put my finger on.
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u/raptorsango 24d ago
I always thought the fact that you can see between a lot of the terrain features made it feel smaller than somewhere like the Cascades in Washington where you just disappear between peaks.
California feels much bigger to me when I leave the 5 and the 101. Going over the sierras to Reno, or poking around Alturas or Medicino I’ve felt much more lost. I’ve only been living here for about 5 years and still feel like I’ve got a lot to see.
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u/YourApishness 24d ago
What's that mountain island in the northern part of the valley?
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u/effietea 24d ago
Sutter buttes
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u/YourApishness 24d ago
Is it a cool place?
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u/effietea 24d ago
Private property mostly but you can arrange a hike. Got the distribution of being the smallest mountain range. Wouldn't go out of my way to visit though
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u/YourApishness 24d ago
Ah, ok. The map makes it look intriguing, but I suspect the scale isn't perfectly realistic and exaggerates all heights.
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u/effietea 24d ago
Yeah, it's a neat landmark though. I used to drive hwy 20 for work and it curves around the buttes. I remember there was a tragic plane crash into the buttes a few years back. And while we were talking about it at work, someone pointed out the irony that they crashed into basically a pimple on flat land.
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u/clowntown777 24d ago
There have been quite a few planes crashed in the Buttes. A bomber carrying nukes crashed in there in 1961 which I thought was crazy.
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u/effietea 24d ago
Yeah that's a fucking crazy story! If I recall, they crashed because they were high on military issued meth
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u/bikecommuter21 24d ago
There used to be a really fun golf course at the base of the Buttes but it’s closed now. It had a massively down hill hole that was fun to hit it and see it fly.
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u/Sulla-proconsul 24d ago
It’s actually a very nice place in say, February? You’ve got to time it so that it’s green and pleasant, but before the rattle snakes wake up.
And the heights aren’t exaggerated. Those hills have some serious inclines in certain areas. We have land by South Butte for winter pasture, and it’s always funny when some of the cows decide to play at being mountain goats.
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u/more_possibilities 24d ago
There are some old abandoned missile silos in that little butte.
Edit: (those little buttes?)
The world’s smallest mountain range.
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u/iamsunshine78 24d ago
I took Regional Geology of California as a college course at university & it was easily the coolest GE class I took. Instead of an on campus lab we went to Yostemite every Saturday. It was incredible. And I actually retained much of what I learned because it was so interesting. (It was almost 30 years ago too!)
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u/CommandersLog 23d ago
That's so sick. What university had that?
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u/Historical_Tennis635 23d ago
I think it’s fairly common at least for California universities with an earth science department. My small community college in San Diego had a class that was a trip to Yosemite lol(much much farther than from SF for sure). Another class I took there had bi-weekly camping trips to geological highlights in socal. They also offered one that took you to Utah. Earth science professors are very eager to drive, go camping, and make terrible rock related puns which keeps the expenses low.
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u/iamsunshine78 23d ago
This! Yeah this was a class at CSU Stanislaus. Yosemite was a pretty short drive & often we’d stop along the way to look at rock formations & look for pyrite. My professor loved talking about pyrite lol!
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u/Historical_Tennis635 23d ago
I’m sure you guys looked at the pyrite’s cleavage and then dropped some acid later? God I miss being a geology major(switched). The department was filled with oddballs in the best way possible.
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u/Silent-Reflection378 24d ago
Problem is it’s over 100 until October
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u/Jesuslocasti 23d ago
Most of California is, with the exception of literal ocean-side cities. For instance, in the bay, Walnut Creek and Livermore also hit 100+ degrees. You have to be next to the ocean otherwise 100+ degrees is normal.
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u/5rings20 24d ago
Came for the cool map, stayed for the Central Valley bashing comments.
Mid 60s and Sunny in December this week. Works for me.
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u/dmabe1985 24d ago
Driving there reminds me of driving through middle America. Funny how nobody thinks of California like that
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u/Fenrik84 23d ago
Yes, I was recently in California for the first time, drove from Yosemite to Monterey, and was stunned to find myself in an ocean of golden grass.
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u/I-am-Just-fine 24d ago
It was a fucking lake
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u/iamsunshine78 24d ago
Yup. Saltwater sea. 15 million years ago.
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u/John_Mayer_Lover 24d ago
Nope. It was a fucking lake as recently as 150 years ago. You could take a steamboat from Fresno to Sacramento in the mid 19th century. The seasonal snowmelt that fed the lake was dammed and diverted into irrigation channels and the ground recovered for farming.
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u/Mexishould 24d ago
Youre both technically right. I know millions of years ago we used to be connected to the ocean and in fact digging some hills near me you can find shark and Megalodon teeth. But more recently it was a few major lakes mainly being Lake Tulare, Lake Buena Vista, and Kern Lake. Between all of that was mostly savannah and wetlands until it reached the delta. (Note Lake Tulare would only flow further north during flooding years.) We eventualy turned the branches of most the rivers into canals and drained the lakes.
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u/Dragon_Fisting 24d ago
You could take a steamboat, by river. Lake Tulare, in our recorded history, was at most ~600 sq miles. The other 19,400 sq miles of the Central Valley used to be a part of Lake Corcoran, but that dried up sometimes 700 to 600 thousand years ago.
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u/iamsunshine78 24d ago edited 23d ago
Yes very aware of that but also a saltwater sea 15 million years ago lol. And fun fact, was like that for about 700,000 years.
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u/Needs_coffee1143 24d ago
Basically feeds America!
Most fruits and vegetables you eat come from California Central Valley
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u/pocossaben 24d ago
The Spanish had California for almost 300 years and didn't make anything off of it, Mexico had it for about 50 years before being taken by the USA. The USA crossed the whole continent to get it and created one of the richest states in the whole world.
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u/scorchorin 24d ago
Don’t think the Spanish had access to oil rigs and machinery and such at the time
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u/Jim-be 24d ago
I read that a few Spanish explorers came up the coast of California and really just shrugged. They couldn’t see anything of value “nothing there”. It was the church that was like ok we will go up there to convert the people. That was when the realized you could put a stick in the ground and it grows. By then it was too late and Mexico took it and the Mexican who called them themselves Californianos started ranching and farming. But that last only 50 years.
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u/Immediate-Sugar-2316 24d ago
I think the main issue was the distance from Europe. Ships would have to have gone all the way around south America or crossed in Mexico or Panama. It was already far from the population centres of Mexico.
Even though the farmland was decent, the logistics made it low on the list of places to be colonised. It is much easier to expand existing colonies than to start a new separate one from scratch, no resources were known to be there at the time.
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u/Chicago1871 24d ago edited 24d ago
And now that state is over 50% hispanic and growing.
Thanks for fixing it up for us buddy.
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u/jewelswan 24d ago
It's 39% last I checked, and not projected to hit 50 AFAIK. Could be wrong, though projections will never be good to go off anyway.
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u/ElmerTheAmish 24d ago
I was on vacation in SF a few years back. We stumbled upon the farmers market at the ferry building one afternoon. We had some of the best produce we've ever had, and I live in the Midwest.
We were planning on cooking dinner that night anyway, and just loaded up on as much as we could. It was fantastic!
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u/modninerfan 23d ago
We’re pretty fortunate where we are. I live in the Central Valley and have about 9 acres of cattle and my wife grows about 80 different fruits and vegetables on about a 1/2 acre of space. My step daughter handles the dozen or so chickens. We don’t sell it or anything, just for us, friends and family. The only thing we struggle with are tropical fruits like dragonfruit but my wife keeps trying.
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u/Hedgehogsarepointy 23d ago
Californians are spoiled on produce and get surprised by other parts of the world where you cant just rotate through 100 kinds of delicious fresh veggies all year round.
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u/FoldAdventurous2022 23d ago
From SF here and even I love buying at that farmers' market. California has amazing local food.
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u/autobotCA 23d ago
I remember the first week I moved to California, I bought a flat of strawberry from a lady on the street corner a block from my house for $20. I proceeded to eat the entire thing (5+ lbs) because they were the best strawberries I’d ever eaten.
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u/nikokidd123 23d ago
California is the agriculture capital of the US with the Central Valley being the largest producer.
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u/withurwife 24d ago
For reference, the Central Valley is slightly bigger than Tennessee.
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u/kcufouyhcti 24d ago
And hotter than the devils dick
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u/jankenpoo 24d ago
No kidding. This summer was like 5 weeks over 100 and a couple weeks around 115!
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u/jarheadMSTR 24d ago
No it’s not tenesee is 42,000 sq miles, Central Valley is about 20,000 square miles
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u/toyoyoshi 23d ago
It looks like the source of that incorrect info is a Simple Wikipedia article written in 2009
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u/NoVacayAtWork 24d ago
So… Orange County and San Diego don’t really feel like mountainous regions but I don’t see a lick of flat land in there.
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u/PerennialGeranium 23d ago
We do have licks of it, they're just small and feather out on the edges so they're hard to see on maps like this.
The San Diego area is a bunch of flattish bits hooked together as best as possible.
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u/jkreuzig 23d ago
I have lived in Orange County for last 30+ years. It’s basically (relatively) flat areas where people live in between hills. If you live in the hills, you have money. If you live in the flatlands, you don’t have money, but you may have equity of your own your home.
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u/yessir6666 23d ago
North Orange County is flat and culturally feels like an extension of the LA metro area sprawl. South Orange County is entirely large rolling hills will little actual flatness. You just can't tell cause nobody walks in OC.
the 55 is a pretty clear delineation between the two.
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u/No-Market9917 24d ago
It used to be Lake Corcoran then it shrunk into Lake Tulare then the US government drained it due to the gold rush and now we’re left with Stockton.
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u/Trojandude 24d ago
I lived in Stockton for ten years. Can we turn it back into a lake?
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u/jkreuzig 23d ago
Having lived in California my entire life, I have driven through Stockton numerous times. One thing quite a few people do not know is that Stockton is a deep water port, 70 miles inland. It’s weird driving from Southern California and seeing ships in a port that far inland.
On the other hand, I’ve also heard Stockton called “The armpit of California“. Mostly because of the weather.
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u/norcaltobos 23d ago
It’s my hometown and while it is certainly nothing special, it’s not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. There are definitely pockets that are rough and you wouldn’t want to accidentally stumble upon those neighborhoods late at night. What decent sized city doesn’t have those though?
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u/Candid-Mine5119 24d ago
When I was in 4th grade (pretty sure, maybe 5th) we made salt clay maps of California geography. There were old salt clay maps of older siblings stored away. My dad said he made a salt clay map of California too. The Central Valley is big
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u/fuzzydream 24d ago
One of the most productive farming regions in the world! Always fun to remind the red state good ole boys that on top of everything else, California produces more food than any other state by a huge margin.
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u/ninersguy916 24d ago
Well to be fair the people living in the places growing that food are also Red State good ole boys.. they just happened to live in a state where there's enough big cities to outweigh their vote lol.. pretty sure every single county in the central Valley was red this past election
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u/THE_GIANT_PAPAYA 23d ago
Sacramento and Yolo are reliably Democratic counties. Solano is also reliably Democratic, but a portion of Solano is in the Bay Area.
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u/TimeRocker 24d ago
Yea, I was gonna say, all of the agricultural regions of Cali are pretty red. Everywhere outside the Bay Area and SoCal are mostly red with the bigger cities like Sacramento and Stockton usually split about 50/50.
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u/Mexishould 24d ago
Just to let you know the Central Valley is very red even now with Trump flags everywhere. Many don't like whats going on in the mostly blue coastal cities.
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u/HeartoftheHive 24d ago
I mean, sure. If you look past the geological instability and the grand fault line, sure. Perfect place to set up house.
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u/sprchrgddc5 24d ago
I’ve spent a lot of time between San Diego and Yuma. I didn’t realize how little flat land SD had. I’ve also driven through those mountains between San Diego and El Centro probably over 100 times and it’s crazy that there isn’t a clear path through those mountains.
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u/cal405 24d ago
Wasn't that all one big ass lake before all the water got diverted?
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u/modninerfan 23d ago
Mostly a mix of marshland, wetland, swamps and grassland actually. There was a large shallow seasonal lake at the southern end but it hasn’t been “all one big ass lake” for hundreds of thousands of years.
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u/AnnetteBishop 24d ago
Ah yes, the great flat brown as I called it in childhood. Great farm land. Shame they are drawing more water than the land has every year and its sinking.
Related fun fact. Most of it used to be a shallow lake / marshland before we dammed rivers and valleys. There is one point in the geological record where there was enough fresh water coming up from the central valley drainage and other coastal valleys that the entire SF bay was fresh water.
What we now call an atmospheric river, etc. Natural extremes are fun when they aren't trying to kill you!
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u/Dragon_Fisting 24d ago
90% of it hasn't been a lake for 600,000 years. Lake Tulare was big, not nearly that big.
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u/viewer12321 24d ago
As a Californian I find this sideways map to be very unsettling. The detailed topography is amazing though.
Mt San Jacinto is such a wild geographic feature. It’s like a giant middle finger sticking out of the Southern California desert.
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u/Pandiosity_24601 24d ago
It’s hot as shit, the air quality sucks, and the fog is fucked
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u/SmoovSamurai 23d ago
Walking to school in the fog was cool as shit until you hear the sounds of stray dog nail scratching the street with no clue where it is.
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u/Hour-Anteater9223 24d ago
It makes the concept of the ancient lake bed much easier for me to understand conceptually, not to mention the torrential pour of water when it emptied, I believe into Monterey bay. What it would be like up in a helicopter watching that event.
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u/SubstantialWar3954 24d ago
Is this image the whole state or the valley? If it's the whole state, does the valley run left to right (north to south?) in the middle of the mountains? I've never been to California, so this map, while cool, is a little hard to decipher without any references.
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u/VerStannen 24d ago
Yes it’s the whole state.
That big bay on the coast right in the middle is San Francisco.
It’s a really cool map.
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u/HauntingAd8940 24d ago
Where did you get this sick topographic map?! Clarity is great zooming in.