Contra Costa County, California

Contra Costa lies across the bay from San Francisco, and adjoins Alameda, its northern boundary being the San Joaquin River and the bays that form the mouth of the Sacramento. Its area is 734 square miles, of which fully one-half is cultivated. Its population is estimated at 17,500; the census of 1880 gives 12,525. The county seat, Martinez, is on the line of the Central Pacific, and looks' over the beautiful Suisun bay. Other gr-owing towns are Antioch, Brentwood, Byron Springs and Port Costa, the seat of the greatest wheat warehouses in California. The county is divided by the Coast range, the great feature of which is Mt. Diablo, the highest point of the range, 3,896 feet above sea level. Agriculture is the chief pursuit, and wheat the main product, although fruit and garden vegetables are rapidly nearing grain in value. Soil and climate are well adapted to all fruits and vines, while the olive flourishes on the hill lands, once regarded as fit for nothing but the wild oat. All along the shore at many points are large factories, while at the docks at Port Costa is loaded eighty per cent, of the wheat ships. The assessed valuation in 1889 was $15,195,592.

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Source: California State Gazetteer and Business Directory 1890, Volume II, R. L. Polk & Company, 1890.