1959
- The Embarcadero Freeway (pictured) opens in San Francisco, the same year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors votes to cancel seven of ten planned freeways
- The Montgomery Block building (pictured) in San Francisco is demolished
- Henry W. Coe State Park (pictured), in the Diablo Range in Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties, is established
- Jack London State Historic Park, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain, is established
- The Crown-Zellerbach Building in San Francisco is completed
- The San Francisco Mime Troupe is formed in San Francisco, performing (despite its name) musical political satire
- Union City is incorporated in Alameda County
- Owen Chamberlain and Emilio Segrè at the University of California, Berkeley are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the antiproton