Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in California, PA

California is a borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania, sitting on the banks of the Monongahela River about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh, within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

California was founded in 1849, the year of the California Gold Rush, and its founders named it for the California Territory to symbolize growth and prosperity, passing over the other proposed names Columbia and Sagamore.

California was incorporated as a borough in 1853, and before it had mayors it was governed by burgesses, the first of whom was Solomon Sibbitt.

California is home to Pennsylvania Western University, California — long known as California University of Pennsylvania — a public university founded in 1852 as the California Academy that enrolls about 6,500 students.

The university began as a normal school for training teachers, became California University of Pennsylvania in 1983, and merged into the new Pennsylvania Western University in July 2022.

The 2020 census counted 5,362 people in California, down sharply from 6,795 in 2010, a swing driven largely by the borough's big student population.

California was once a major coal town: its Vesta No. 4 mine, opened in 1893, was the largest soft coal mine in the world, and the local Vigilant Mine produced the largest single lump of coal in the world.

In 1953 the neighboring East Pike Run Township merged into California Borough, giving the borough its present-day footprint of about 11 square miles of land.

The PennWest California campus was built partly on land once occupied by the unincorporated town of Philipsburg.

The Princeton Review named PennWest California one of the Best Colleges in the Northeast for 17 consecutive years as of 2022.