Pleasant Hill is a city located in Contra Costa County, California. It is near the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 34,613 residents at the 2020 census. Pleasant Hill was incorporated as a city in 1961. The total area of Pleasant Hill is 7.08 square miles. The elevation is 52 feet. Pleasant Hill has a varied landscape that includes some valleys and rolling hills. In undisturbed wilderness around Pleasant Hill, oak woodlands and mixed woods can be found.
Pleasant Hill has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. This region has warm and arid summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Winter daytime temperatures tend to be in only the fifties and sixties, and summers range in the high seventies to upper eighties at most. Occasionally temperatures will reach the low nineties in the summer. Very rarely, the temperatures can reach the one hundred degree range during what would be extreme heat waves. Freezing in winter is not common, but it does happen. Summer fog is only occasional but winter fog is very common.
The racial makeup of Pleasant Hill is 24,846 (74.9%) White, 686 (2.1%) African American, 127 (0.4%) Native American, 4,516 (13.6%) Asian, 66 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 1,079 (3.3%) from other races, and 1,832 (5.5%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4,009 persons (12.1%).
The population is spread out, with 6,563 people (19.8%) under the age of 18, 3,180 people (9.6%) aged 18 to 24, 8,901 people (26.8%) aged 25 to 44, 9,902 people (29.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 4,606 people (13.9%) who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 40.7 years. For every 100 females, there are 94.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 91.0 males.
There are 13,708 households in Pleasant Hill, out of which 3,892 (28.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 6,329 (46.2%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 1,359 (9.9%) had a female householder with no husband present, 597 (4.4%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 789 (5.8%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 152 (1.1%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 3,929 households (28.7%) were made up of individuals, and 1,431 (10.4%) had someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.38. There were 8,285 families (60.4 percent of all households); the average family size was 2.96.
According to the city’s 2013 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report as of 2009 the city’s top employers were: Mount Diablo Unified School District, Contra Costa County Fire Protection, Safeway, Target, Yandell Truckaway, Nightingale of Contra Costa, John F. Kennedy University, Contra Costa County Office of Education, Hospice of the East Bay, and Irvin Deutscher Family YMCA.
It is the home of College Park High School, Diablo Valley College, the Pleasant Hill Library of the Contra Costa County Library system, and the Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park District.