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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.

Yolo County, California

Yolo County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Woodland
Year Organized: 1850
Square Miles: 1,012

Court House:

625 Court Street
County Administration Building
Woodland, CA 95695-3448

Etymology - Origin of County Name

In the original act of 1850, the name was spelled "Yola." Yolo is an Indian name variously believed to be a corruption of an Indian tribal name Yo-loy meaning "a place abounding in rushes" or of the name of the Indian chief, Yodo, or of the Indian village of Yodoi.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Yolo County was one of the original 27 counties created when California became a state in 1850.

In the original act of 1850 the name was spelled "Yola." Yolo is a Native American name variously believed to be a corruption of a tribal name Yo-loy meaning "a place abounding in rushes" or of the name of the chief, Yodo, or of the village of Yodoi. To some, Yolo also serves as an acronym for "you only live once".

The first recorded contact with Westerners occurred in the late 1830s. These included Spanish missionaries as well as trappers and hunters who could be found along the banks of “Cache Creek” – named by French-Canadian trappers. The first white settler was William Gordon who received a land grant from the Mexican government in 1842 and began planting wheat and other crops.

The towns of Yolo County were out-growths of native villages along waterways. Its first town, Fremont, was founded in 1849 along the confluence of the Sacramento and Feather Rivers and became the first county seat. Knights Landing, Washington, Cacheville (later called Yolo), Clarksburg, Winters, Esparto, Capay, Guinda, and Davisville (Davis) were all built near waterways. Davisville had the added advantage of being on the path of the newly constructed railroad. Woodland, which became the county seat in 1862, began in a wooded area of valley oaks and was also served by a nearby railroad.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,023 square miles (2,649 km²), of which, 1,013 square miles (2,624 km²) of it is land and 10 square miles (25 km²) of it (0.94%) is water.

Yolo County 653,549 acres is located in the rich agricultural regions of California’s Central Valley and the Sacramento River Delta. It is directly west of Sacramento, the State Capital of California, and northeast of the Bay Area counties of Solano and Napa. The eastern two-thirds of the county consists of nearly level alluvial fans, flat plains and basins, while the western third is largely composed of rolling terraces and steep uplands used for dry-farmed grain and range. The elevation ranges from slightly below sea level near the Sacramento River around Clarksburg to 3,000 feet along the ridge of the western mountains. Putah Creek descends from Lake Berryessa offering fishing and camping opportunities and wanders through the arboretum of the University of California at Davis. Cache Creek, flowing from Clear Lake, offers class II-III rapids for white water rafting and kayaking.

Neighboring Counties:

Northeast: Sutter County
Southeast: Sacramento County
South: Solano County
Southwest: Napa County
Northwest: Lake County; Colusa County

Cities and Towns:

- Davis	city	Incorporated Area
- West Sacramento	city	Incorporated Area
- Winters	city	Incorporated Area
- Woodland (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."