Hercules is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, on the southeastern shore of San Pablo Bay in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area. Its origins are unusual: the city began not as a farming or port settlement but as an explosives factory. In 1879 the California Powder Works purchased a portion of Rancho El Pinole to build a plant making black powder and, later, dynamite and TNT, and the Hercules Powder Company that grew from it gave the community its name. The company town incorporated as Hercules in 1900, making it one of the Bay Area's few cities founded directly on industrial manufacturing. That industrial past has long since given way to a different role. Today Hercules is a residential commuter city of about 26,000, bisected by Interstate 80 and situated roughly 12 miles north of Berkeley, 18 miles north of Oakland, and 22 miles northeast of San Francisco, with the Carquinez Bridge and the route to Vallejo and Napa just four miles to the northeast. Refugio Creek runs through the center of the city and empties into the bay, dividing the hillside neighborhoods from the shoreline and giving the town its topographic structure. Hercules is served by the West Contra Costa Unified School District, with Hanna Ranch Elementary and Hercules Middle/High School within the city. Its transit center links residents to regional bus service and the Capitol Corridor rail line, making the city a practical base for commuters bound for the inner Bay Area or toward Sacramento and the north. Hercules suits people seeking a bayside, family-oriented East Bay suburb — a distinctive small-city history, hillside and shoreline neighborhoods, and strong freeway and transit access to the wider Bay Area and beyond.