High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Upstate California is a region of California consisting of its mostly-rural northernmost 20 counties. Generally, this 46,900-square-mile (121,000 km2) area consists of all territory within California north of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento areas. Upstate California is visually recognizable on a map as the north-south trending portion of the state's boundaries, northward of Point Arena and Lake Tahoe. It coincides with the northern half of Northern California's span of latitude. It includes the northern portions of the North Coast, Sacramento Valley, and Sierra Nevada as well as all of the Shasta Cascade region, which is California's portion of the Cascade Range.