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California Counties

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California Counties

The U.S. state of California is divided into fifty-eight counties. On January 4, 1850, the California constitutional committee recommended the formation of 18 counties. They were Benicia, Butte, Fremont, Los Angeles, Mariposa, Monterey, Mount Diablo, Oro, Redding, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Sonoma, and Sutter. On April 22, the Counties of Branciforte, Calaveras, Coloma, Colusi, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Trinity, and Yuba were added. Benicia was renamed Solano, Coloma to El Dorado, Fremont to Yola, Mt. Diablo to Contra Costa, San Jose to Santa Clara, Oro to Tuolumne, and Redding to Shasta. One of the first state legislative acts regarding Counties was to rename Branciforte County to Santa Cruz, Colusi to Colusa, and Yola to Yolo.

The last California county to have been established is Imperial County in 1907.

Del Norte County, California

Del Norte County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Crescent City
Year Organized: 1857
Square Miles: 1,008

Court House:

981 H Street
County Courthouse
Crescent City, CA 95531-3415

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Created 1857, from territory formerly included in Klamath County. The name of this county signifies "the north," and the county derived its name from its geographical position in the extreme northwest corner of the state.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Del Norte County was founded in 1857, from part of the territory of Klamath County following the great California Gold Rush. Klamath County itself ceased to exist in 1874.

Del Norte County is located at the far northwest corner of the State of California on the Pacific adjacent to the Oregon border. Del Norte is the abbreviated Spanish nickname for "the land of the north" (la tierra del norte), and is known as "The Gateway to the Redwood Coast". Despite the Spanish etymology, the common pronunciation is to drop the trailing "e" and say "Del Nort". The county seat is Crescent City, the county's only incorporated city.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,230 square miles (3,185 km²), of which, 1,008 square miles (2,610 km²) of it is land and 222 square miles (575 km²) of it (18.05%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

North: Curry County, Ore.
Northeast: Josephine County, Ore.
East: Siskiyou County
South: Humboldt County
West: North Pacific Ocean

Cities and Towns:

- Crescent City (County Seat)

city

Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."