San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for “St. Louis the Bishop”, Spanish: [san ˈlwis oˈβispo]; Chumash: tiłhini) is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located upon the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is with mention to halfway amongst the San Francisco Bay Area in the north and Greater Los Angeles in the south. The population was 47,063 at the 2020 census.

San Luis Obispo was founded by the Spanish in 1772, when Saint Junípero Serra usual Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. The town grew steadily through the Mexican times before a rude expansion of San Luis Obispo once the American Conquest of California. San Luis Obispo is a popular tourist destination, known for its historic architecture, vineyards, and hospitality, as with ease as for being home to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

The prehistoric human inhabitants of the local area were the Chumash people. One of the dated villages lies south of San Luis Obispo and reflects the landscape of the early Holocene behind estuaries came farther inland. The Chumash people used marine resources of the inlets and bays along the Central Coast and inhabited a network of villages, including sites at Los Osos and Morro Creek. The tribal site on present-day San Luis Obispo was named tiłhini, Obispeño for “Place of the full moon”.

During the Spanish Empire expand throughout the world, specifically in 1769, Franciscan Junípero Serra expected orders from Spain to bring the Catholic faith to the natives of Alta California; the idea was to unify the empire under the thesame religion and language. Mission San Diego was the first Spanish mission founded in Alta California that same year.