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) is a city located in eastern Contra Costa County, California, the outer portion of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.
It has one BART station, the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station located in Bay Point.
The current zip code is 94565 for both Pittsburg and Bay Point, and the area code is 925.
In 1849, Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson (from New York) bought the Los Medanos land grant, and laid out a town he called New York of the Pacific. By 1850, this venture failed. With the discovery of coal nearby, the place became a port for coaling, and adopted the name Black Diamond, after the mining firm. Due to the industrial potential of the site, the name Pittsburg was proposed in 1909.
Pittsburg, founded in 1839, was called first "New York Landing", then "Black Diamond", before citizens voted on "Pittsburg" on February 11 1911, in honor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the "H" dropped. The current name was chosen due to the city's relations with the steel building industry, first established by the Columbia Geneva Steel Company. The original town site fronts on the Sacramento River Delta, reflecting its origins as a deep water channel river port. (As of January 1 2007, new state legislation will enable the city to manage its own riverfront for commercial development and subsequent port operations).
Since the early 1900s, the city has grown inland to the south, then spread east and west along State Route 4, now a freeway carrying resident commuters to jobs in the San Francisco Bay-Oakland Region. The city has enjoyed continued residential redevelopment growth to the north, as well as ongoing construction of major subdivisions in the southwest hills. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 56,769.
The city has an extensive history of coal mining and industrial development since the late 1800s, with USS-POSCO Industries (a joint venture between US Steel and Pohang Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. of South Korea) and Dow Chemical Company maintaining substantial plants in Pittsburg.
Camp Stoneman, located in the area, was a major staging area for the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War.
The post office first opened in 1868 as Black Diamond, and changed its name with the town's in 1911.