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California is strange (for various reasons) but one of them is that it has a very large population, and a very long border with other states, and yet very little population near the borders (unless you count Mexico).

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California's borders are bit strange for a state, but they're perfectly normal for a country. When the borders were decided, there weren't really any existing political boundaries to discuss except Mexico, so they went with geographical boundaries. The Sierras to the East, the Pacific to the West, the Cascades to the North, and Mexico to the South. The only place they really needed to smack a line on a map was in the middle of the Mojave desert, where they just continued the line from the Sierras to the Colorado River.

Some of the other western states share it - because the land is so empty - but the midwest and east often have major population centers at or very near to a border.

I seem to remember California was close to or even beating Texas for "percentage of residents who have never left the state."

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