List of counties in California

The of  is divided into fifty-eight. Counties are responsible for all elections, property-tax collection, maintenance of public records such as deeds, and local-level s within their borders, as well as providing law enforcement (through the county and sheriff's deputies) to areas that do not lie within incorporated.


 * The county is the default unit of local government (all parts of the state's land are allocated to one of the state's 58 counties). Each county has a and is subject to mandatory duties under state law to provide its residents with services like law enforcement, healthcare, road maintenance, and so on. Balancing a county's mandatory and discretionary duties is a very difficult task; any sufficiently injured county taxpayer has standing to sue the county to enforce certain duties where financial distress is no excuse, such as healthcare.
 * If residents of a sufficiently large piece of county land do not like their county's resource allocation decisions, they can incorporate a . The city government then takes some of the tax revenue that would have gone to the county, and can impose additional taxes on its residents. It can then choose to provide almost all the services usually provided by the county (and more), or provide only a few and pay the county to do the rest. A city in this last arrangement is called a ; this type of contract is generally known among lawyers as the "Lakewood Plan," because it was pioneered by the city of  in 1954.
 * The idea of "opting out" of county control in California has been taken to its logical extremes. Almost all of the city of is one large industrial zone, while almost all of the town of  is zoned as residential.
 * Due to geographical variations in and  revenue (the primary revenue source for cities and counties) and differing attitudes towards priorities, there are interesting variations in the levels of various services from one city to the next. For example, the city of  is far more generous when it comes to helping the homeless than other cities in  or the county government.
 * Also, county ordinances do not apply to cities unless they are ratified by each individual city. Thus, for instance, in Los Angeles County, a few cities have not ratified the ordinance requiring the posting of &mdash; even though it was passed many years ago &mdash; and in those cities, ratings need not be posted.
 * The state of has one consolidated city-county, . The city's board of supervisors govern both aspects, and there is both a city  department and a county, the latter mostly responsible for operating the county.

First establishment of California counties
On, , 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, 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 in 1907.

Table of California counties
The current number of counties was achieved over time by subdivision of many of the larger counties into smaller ones. The links in the column are to the Census Bureau Info page for that county.

Defunct counties

 * was created in 1851 from the northern half of Trinity County, but in 1874 it was divided between Humboldt and Siskiyou counties. Part of the county's territory went to Del Norte in 1857.
 * Pautah County was created in 1852 out of territory which, the state of California assumed, was to be ceded to it by the from territory in what is now the state of .  When the cession never occurred, the  officially abolished the never-created county in 1859.