California, Falkirk
California (Scottish Gaelic: Calafòrnia[2]) is a former pit village in the Falkirk council area of Scotland.The emergence of the settlement may be contemporaneous with the Gold Rush, however, as reflected in the following housing report of 1911, which claimed "The village of California, also in South East Stirlingshire, was built in 1849, and no doubt took its name from the region of the gold boom at that time, just as a modern colliery in the same part of the county was christened Klondyke by the miners - and I have heard two or three houses attached to it go by the name of Dawson City.Colliers had been settling on Whitesiderig Muir throughout the early nineteenth century on land claimed by the Duke of Hamilton.By 1860 California Row had come into existence and was owned by James Nimmo & Company, owners of the nearby Blackbraes Colliery.[11] Nonetheless, this was seen as an improvement on the previous situation, where the inhabitants resorted to fields and hedgerows and the village was marked by middens.Ironically, the source of the water which flooded the pit was traced to California and the diversion of a small burn there.