Calaveras County (Calaveras, Spanish for "Skulls"; ), officially the County of Calaveras, is a county in both the Gold Country and High Sierra regions of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 45,292. The county seat is San Andreas. Angels Camp is the county's only incorporated city. The county was reportedly named for the remains of Native Americans discovered by the Spanish explorer Captain Gabriel Moraga in 1806.
Calaveras Big Trees State Park, a preserve of giant sequoia trees, is in the county several miles east of the town of Arnold on State Highway 4. Credit for the discovery of giant sequoias there is given to Augustus T. Dowd, a trapper who made the discovery in 1852 while tracking a bear. When the bark from the "Discovery Tree" was removed and taken on tour around the world, the trees became a worldwide sensation and one of the county's first tourist attractions. The uncommon gold telluride mineral calaverite was discovered in the county in 1861 and is named for it.
Mark Twain set his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in the county. The county hosts an annual fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, featuring a frog-jumping contest, to celebrate the association with Twain's story. Each year's winner is commemorated with a brass plaque mounted in the sidewalk of downtown Historic Angels Camp and this feature is known as the Frog Hop of Fame. Lukas Foss used Twain's story for his 1950 opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
In 2015, Calaveras County had the highest rate of suicide deaths in the United States, with 49.1 per 100,000 people.
Etymology
The Spanish word calaveras means "skulls." The county takes its name from the Calaveras River; it was said to have been named by Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga, during his 1806–1808 expeditions, when he found many skulls of Native Americans along the banks of the stream. He believed they had either died of famine or been killed in tribal conflicts over hunting and fishing grounds. A more likely cause was a European epidemic disease, acquired from interacting with other tribes near the Missions on the coast. The Stanislaus River, which forms the southern boundary, is named for Estanislao, a Lakisamni Yokuts who escaped from Mission San José in the late 1830s. He is reported to have raised a small group of men with crude weapons, hiding in the foothills when the Mexicans attacked. The natives were quickly decimated by Mexican firearms.
In 1836, John Marsh, Jose Noriega, and a party of men went exploring in Northern California. They made camp along a river bed in the evening, and upon waking discovered that they had camped amid a great quantity of skulls and bones. They also gave the river the name Calaveras.
Mark Twain spent 88 days in the county in 1865, during which he heard the story that became "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" at the Angel Hotel. This story kicked off his career and put Calaveras County on the map.
History
Calaveras County was one of the original counties of the state of California, created in 1850 at the time of admission to the Union. Parts of the county's territory were reassigned to Amador County in 1854 and to Alpine County in 1864.
In December 1849 and January 1850 the county was the site of "Chile War of 1849" in which Anglo-American and Chilean miners raided each others camp and fought a legal battle. The conflict ended with three Chileans publicly executed in Mokelumne Hill on January 3, 1850.
The telluride mineral calaverite was first recognized and obtained in 1861 from the Stanislaus Mine, Carson Hill, Angels Camp, in Calaveras Co., California. It was named for the County of origin by chemist and mineralogist Frederick Augustus Genth who differentiated it from the known gold telluride mineral sylvanite, and formally reported it as a new gold mineral in 1868.
Geography
thumb|California Caverns – Calaveras County
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (1.6%) is water. A California Department of Forestry report lists the county's area in acres as 663,000, although the exact figure would be . There are a number of caverns located in Calaveras County.
Adjacent counties
- Amador County – north
- Alpine County – northeast
- Tuolumne County – south
- Stanislaus County – southwest
- San Joaquin County – west
National protected area
- Stanislaus National Forest (part)
Demographics
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Calaveras County is in .
In the State Senate, Calaveras County is in . In the State Assembly, it is mostly in , and partly in .
Past presidential elections in Calaveras County have displayed preferences for Republican candidates; the last Democrat to win a majority in the county was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, although Democrat Bill Clinton lost the county by only 17 votes in 1992. In 2020, Republicans won 60% of the vote for the first time since 2004.
Crime
The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense.
{| class="wikitable collapsible"
|-
! colspan="3" | Population and crime rates
|-
! scope="row" style="text-align: left;" | Population
| 84 || 1.83
|-
! scope="row" style="text-align: left;" | Homicide
| 405 || 8.84
|-
! scope="row" style="text-align: left;" | Motor vehicle theft
! data-sort-type="number" | Violent crimes
Population ranking
The population ranking of the following table is based on the 2020 census of Calaveras County.
† county seat
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
!Rank
!City/Town/etc.
!Municipal type
!Population (2020 census)
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 1
|Rancho Calaveras
| CDP
| 5,590
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 2
|Valley Springs
| CDP
| 3,779
|- style="background-color:#FFFACD;"
| 3
|Angels Camp
| City
| 3,667
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 4
|Copperopolis
| CDP
| 3,400
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 5
|Arnold
| CDP
| 3,288
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 6
|† San Andreas
| CDP
| 2,994
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 7
|Murphys
| CDP
| 1,995
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 8
|Forest Meadows
| CDP
| 1,276
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 9
|Mokelumne Hill
| CDP
| 691
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 10
|West Point
| CDP
| 688
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 11
|Avery
| CDP
| 636
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 12
|Dorrington
| CDP
| 519
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 13
|Wallace
| CDP
| 479
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 14
|Vallecito
| CDP
| 442
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 15
|Rail Road Flat
| CDP
| 316
|- style="background-color:#F0FFF0;"
| 16
|Mountain Ranch
| CDP
| 223
|}
See also
- USS Calaveras County (LST-516)
- List of school districts in Calaveras County, California
- Calaveras Big Trees State Park
- Mercer Caverns
- Moaning Cavern
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Calaveras County, California
Notes
References
Further reading
- A Memorial and Biographical History of the Counties of Merced, Stanislaus, Calaveras, Tuolumne and Mariposa, California. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1892.
- "Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit: 2005 Pre-Fire Management Plan September 28, 2005 Edition," California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, September 28, 2005, pp. 16, 17
- United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
External links
- Calaveras County Visitors Bureau
- Angels Camp, Calaveras County, weather
- Arnold, Calaveras County, weather
- Calaveras County Superior Court
- Map of fire stations in Calaveras County