Current Time in Stockton, United States

Stockton lies in the Central Valley of California, about eighty kilometres south of Sacramento, at the eastern edge of the great delta where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers meet before flowing to San Francisco Bay. A maze of sloughs, levees and islands surrounds the city, and a deep water channel dredged through them connects Stockton directly to the Pacific, making it one of the few inland seaports on the west coast. Summers are long, hot and dry, while winters are mild and often shrouded in the dense valley fog known as tule fog.

Around three hundred and twenty thousand people live here, in what is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States. Agriculture, food processing, logistics and the port drive the economy, and the surrounding county is among the most productive farming districts in the country, growing almonds, walnuts, cherries, grapes, tomatoes and the asparagus that the city once celebrated with a famous annual festival.

Stockton was founded in 1849 by a German immigrant who had acquired a Mexican land grant, and it boomed almost immediately as the supply point for miners heading to the southern goldfields of the Sierra Nevada. Unlike many gold rush towns it survived the bust, because the farmland around it proved more valuable than the gold. Shipbuilding, flour milling and agricultural machinery followed, and it was in Stockton that Benjamin Holt developed the crawler track that made modern tractors and, later, tanks possible, giving the world the word caterpillar. Waves of migrants arrived to work the fields, from China, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, India, Italy and later Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and their descendants give the city its character.

That heritage is visible in remarkable places. The Sikh temple founded here in 1912 was the first in the United States and remains a centre of the American Punjabi community. The Little Manila district recalls what was once the largest Filipino settlement outside the Philippines. The Haggin Museum, set in a leafy park, combines fine European and American paintings with local history, including Holt's early machines.

The waterfront has been redeveloped with a marina, a ballpark, an arena and a restored 1930s theatre, and boating on the delta is a way of life, with thousands of kilometres of navigable waterways. The University of the Pacific, the oldest chartered university in California, occupies a handsome brick campus of ivy covered halls that has often stood in for an idealised college in films.

Stockton faced serious difficulties after the housing crash and became the largest American city of its time to seek bankruptcy protection, but it has since stabilised and drawn national attention for innovative social programmes. Amtrak services, commuter trains to the Bay Area, two major highways and a regional airport keep it well connected.

Stockton is significant as a working port city, an agricultural powerhouse and a place where many cultures have built a shared home.