Pinole, California

Pinole is a city in Contra Costa County, California, on the shore of San Pablo Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area, and its name is Spanish for cornmeal. The 2020 census counted 19,022 residents, and the city has a total area of about 31 square kilometres, more than half of it water. The Huchiun tribe lived in the region before 1823, when Ygnacio Martinez, commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco, received the Rancho El Pinole land grant from the Mexican government. In the 1850s Bernardo Fernandez, a Portuguese immigrant, started a trading facility on the bay shore. The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1878 along with the first post office, and the city was incorporated in 1903. Construction of Interstate 80 in 1958 helped turn Pinole into a suburban commuter community, and its downtown still keeps much of its turn-of-the-century building stock.