Why aren’t there any major cities in CA north of Sacramento?

23 comments

1. The terrain is very forested and hilly. The oceanside is rocky cliffs. There isn’t much viable agriculture (outside of cannabis). There’s just not much reason there would be big cities there. It’s similar to somewhere like Maine or Montana.

2. Beaches in California are pretty cold throughout the state because of the currents coming down from Alaska, so definitely no warm beaches. 🙂

3. I am from Napa. The North Coast, ahhh, especially when the sun peaks out, Marin Coast, Sonoma Coast, Sea Ranch, Gualala, Mendocino Coast, Humboldt Coast. My mother is from Samoa. I happy no one knows these places. Don’t build any major cities and ruin the little still beautiful in California. Just keep walking, influencers and other worthless humans, nothing to see.

4. The northern coast has no easy route to the interior (no wide, easy rivers like the Sacramento) and not too many great harbor spots, and the Sacramento is only navigable so far north. Add in mountainous terrain outside of the valley, and no major historical crossroads in the region (goods flow down the river to the bay, not in any other direction), then it makes sense why Redding is the last large settlement til Medford.

5. Lack of navigable rivers, mountains, poor harbors, steep coastlines. Redding is sort of the hub for the northern part of the state. Everything that’s not in the central valley is rugged mountains, not really good for development.

6. Geography, Terrain and lack of navigable rivers.

   Cities in the United States were built on navigable Rivers, Ocean ports and Lakes. Las Vegas is a unique exception to this rule.

   Most of the Major US cities lie on either the fall line, Forks of major rivers or are lake or Ocean ports.

7. Most of the coast of CA is mountainous and there are few rivers. The SF bay area is the mouth of, really, the only navigable waterways; SD has a usable harbor, and LA is on, really, the only large expanse of flat land on the coast. There are no large coastal cities north of SF because there is nowhere to put them.

   As a result, LA and SF became the two poles of population in California. On top of that, the central valley is substantially larger between SF and LA than it is north of SF. Thus there is more room for agriculture and more room for population. Because this part of the valley is between the two big population poles, it naturally developed to a greater degree.

   When you go north of Sacramento, you have a) a significantly smaller lobe of the valley, and b) no major city at all until you get alllllll the way to Portland, primarily due to terrain as well as historical reasons.

   I think this kind of explains why Chico and Redding (for example) did not get as large and prominent as Fresno and Bakersfield and Modesto and Stockton and all the other relatively major cities that are located in the huge fertile valley between SF and LA.

8. Turn on the terrain layer on Google Maps and ask why would there be a city there?

9. Depends on what you call “major cities”.
   Chico has 102,000 people
   Redding has 93,000 people

   And they are both north of Sacramento

10. Look t a topographical map and you’ll see that the terrain is very rugged and not suitable for a large settlement of people.

11. Because you’re entering State of Jefferson territory.

12. Yuba city CA has a population larger than the most populous cities in Delaware, Vermont, west Virginia, and Wyoming.

13. Redding is nice enough to get much bigger, but the people there don’t want it. It’s like why San Luis Obispo is so small, because the people there don’t want more people.

14. Eureka is definitely not a major city but it does feel much bigger then it is in my opinion.

15. its mountains i think

16. Because terrain

17. Because, they can only stack shit so high!

18. There’s the Emerald Triangle for growing weed. Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties.

19. Hey! There’s Weed, CA. A little respect, please. Ya gotta get a hat when passing through…

20. All of California’s major cities are situated on navigable waterways and are usually ports. The two notable exceptions to this are Fresno and Bakersfield, both acting as hubs for the surrounding agribusiness, with Bakersfield having the added bonus of being an oil town. The farms north of Sacramento are usually close enough to Sac to not need to have historically developed a larger city. But there are a handful of cities through there at are around 100K. But Sacramento is the last viable port going north.

21. Despite being several miles inland, Sacramento is still technically a port city because if the rivers, providing direct shipping lanes to the rest of the world. There are no other cities like this, with direct ocean access, north of Sacramento. Additionally, you’ve got a lot of federal land in the far north, with the state and the feds having a keen interest in preserving the pristine beauty of the land up there. A lot of it is vibrant, forested, and mountainous. Beautiful alpine snow peaks, just as in Tahoe and the sierras. If you saw it, you wouldn’t want to build cities there either. It’s best to just let the beauty be.

22. *Shakes fist in Eurekan*

23. The coast mountain range…