24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Pittsburg, CA

Pittsburg stands where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet on the southern shore of Suisun Bay, giving it deep-water port access at the edge of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.

Pittsburg began with the 1839 Mexican land grant Rancho Los Medanos, and in 1849 Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson bought the grant and laid out a townsite called New York of the Pacific, with its first streets surveyed by a young William Tecumseh Sherman.

Known first as New York Landing, the town grew into a fishing and canning village of about 500 people by 1855, then boomed as a coal-shipping port after coal was discovered in the Mount Diablo foothills near Nortonville.

The town took the name Black Diamond after the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company, whose railroad hauled coal cars down present-day Railroad Avenue to the waterfront docks.

Pittsburg incorporated in 1903 under the name Black Diamond, and on February 11, 1911, voters renamed it Pittsburg — deliberately spelled without the final 'h' — to honor Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the two cities' shared steel and mining heritage.

By 1910 Columbia Geneva Steel had opened in Pittsburg with what was then the largest foundry of its kind on the West Coast, and heavy industry still defines the waterfront today through the USS-POSCO steel mill and the Corteva (formerly Dow Chemical) plant.

In 1942 the Army built Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, the main West Coast point of embarkation in World War II — for thousands of GIs it was their last stop on American soil before the Pacific — and the camp closed in 1954, its land becoming schools, shops, and homes.

Pittsburg's population was 76,416 at the 2020 census, up sharply from 63,264 in 2010, as Bay Area commuters pushed into eastern Contra Costa County.

Pittsburg has about 23,781 households, and they are on the larger side for the Bay Area, averaging 3.18 people per household.

Pittsburg is home to Los Medanos College, a community college in the Contra Costa Community College District whose name recalls Rancho Los Medanos and which opened its doors in the spring of 1974.