Stockton is a city in and the county chair of San Joaquin County in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquired Rancho Campo de los Franceses. The city is named after Robert F. Stockton, and it was the first community in California to have a publicize not of Spanish or Native American origin. The city is located on the San Joaquin River in the northern San Joaquin Valley. Stockton is the 11th largest city in California and the 58th largest city in the United States. It was named an All-America City in 1999, 2004, 2015, and anew in 2017.

Built during the California Gold Rush, Stockton’s seaport serves as a gateway to the Central Valley and beyond. It provided easy access for trade and transportation to the southern gold mines. The University of the Pacific (UOP), chartered in 1851, is the oldest the academy in California, and has been located in Stockton previously 1923. In 2012, Stockton filed for what was after that the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history – which had merged causes, including financial mismanagement in the 1990s, generous fringe support to unionized city employees, and the 2008 financial crisis. Stockton successfully exited bankruptcy in February 2015.

When Europeans first arrived in the Stockton area, it was occupied by the Yatchicumne, a branch of the Northern Valley Yokuts Indians. They built their villages upon low mounds to keep their homes above regular floods. A Yokuts village named Pasasimas was located upon a mound surrounded by Edison and Harrison Streets upon what is now the Stockton Channel in downtown Stockton.

The Siskiyou Trail began in the northern San Joaquin Valley. It was a centuries-old Native American footpath that led through the Sacramento Valley beyond the Cascades and into present-day Oregon.