California County Seats: 1850 to Present
Are you happy with the location of your county seat? If so, that’s good. If not, you have a problem. It is almost impossible to change the location of a county seat. It used to be easy. In its 150 year history, the California state legislature created 59 counties (only 58 are left) but designated 95 different places as county seats.
Most California counties, 35 of them, have had only one county seat but 24 counties have had more than one county seat. The leaders are Stanislaus and Sutter Counties, each with five county seats. The runners up are Alameda, Butte, Calaveras, and Yolo Counties, each with four county seats. Klamath County had three county seats. Seventeen counties have had two county seats.
The most recent designation of a county seat was El Centro, in 1907. It was named the county seat of the last county to be created, Imperial County. And that created the county seat with the lowest elevation, 45 feet below sea level. (The county seat with the highest elevation is Bridgeport in Mono County at 6468 feet.)
The last county to change its county seat was Shasta County where in 1887 Shasta City was replaced by Redding as the county seat.
Three cities each have been the county seat of two different counties.
Auburn was the county seat of Sutter County briefly in 1851 then was the county seat of Placer County from 1851 to the present.
Jackson was the county seat of Calaveras County from 1850 to 1852, and has been the county seat of Amador County from 1854 to the present.
Crescent City was the county seat of Klamath County in 1855. When the seat was moved to Orleans Bar, that action strengthened a successful effort to create Del Norte County with Crescent City as its county seat. That reduction of Klamath County to mostly very steep mountain mining country with an often moving population, and with officials considered not always honest, contributed to the eventual death of Klamath County in 1875.
Aurora was the county seat of Mono County from 1861 to 1864 when it was discovered that Aurora was not in the State of California, but was in Nevada, about three miles outside California.
Not all incorporated
Eight of the present county seats are not incorporated cities.
Three of the county seats are in counties which have no incorporated cities. They are Mariposa in Mariposa County, Markleeville in Alpine County, and Weaverville in Trinity County.
Five of the county seats are in counties which have only one incorporated city, but that city is not the county seat. They are Bridgeport in Mono County where Mammoth Lakes is the incorporated city, Downieville in Sierra County where Loyalton is the incorporated city, Independence in Inyo County where Bishop is the incorporated city, Quincy in Plumas County where Portola is the incorporated city, and San Andreas in Calaveras County where Angels Camp is the incorporated city.
Not on maps
Some former county seats cannot be found on today’s maps. Two former county seats, for example, are now under water. The town of Bidwell Bar, once the Butte County seat, is now under the reservoir created by the Oroville Dam on the Feather River.
The town of Millerton, once the county seat of Fresno County, is now under Millerton Lake, created by the Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River.
A town without buildings, Oro, was very briefly the Sutter County seat. It was about two miles from Nicolaus. Although approved by the state legislature as the county seat, at the time of the approval it existed only on paper, supported by a smooth talking state senator.
Fremont in Yolo County was on Sacramento River south of present Knights Landing. Yolo County’s Fremont should not be confused with the very different city in Alameda County created in 1956.
Stewart in Tuolumne County changed its name to Sonora.
Monroeville, once the County Seat of Colusa, was in what is now in Glenn County at the mouth of Stony Creek on the west side of the Sacramento River, about 20 miles north of the present Colusa County.
Pleasant Valley was designated as the Calaveras County seat when the county was created, but the name of the community was soon changed to Double Springs. Its site was close to the present community of Valley Springs. The Calaveras County community formerly named Pleasant Valley should not be confused with the present communities of the same name in Alpine and El Dorado Counties.
Vernon was in southern Sutter County near the present community of Verona. Vernon in Sutter County should not be confused with the City of Vernon in Los Angeles County which has the smallest population of California’s 473 cities. It had 85 people in 1999.
Visalia was a county seat with no specific boundaries when it was first designated as the Tulare county seat. After Visalia became incorporated, county officials proposed to construct a new courthouse outside, but adjacent to, the city limits. A court determined that the action was not a violation of the county seat statute since Visalia had no precise boundaries when it was designated as the county seat.
In the early days of the state, all you had to do to change the county seat was to convince the state legislature. But just as the creation of new counties and significant changes in county boundaries do not now easily occur, changes in county seats are also much more difficult than they were in the first few years of the state.
The Government Code in Sections 23680 to 23690 specifies a procedure for the removal of county seats. The It starts with a petition signed by a majority of the qualified electors asking for removal of the county seat from the present seat to a specified community.
If the petition is sufficient, an election is held. For the county seat to be changed, two-thirds of the vote must be in favor of the removal of the county seat and in favor of a change to a particular place.
If the proponents are not successful, no second election can be held for four years.
If the proponents are successful and the county seat is moved, it can be moved again but no election for that purpose can be held unless a petition is signed by three-fourths of the electors as determined by the votes cast at the next preceding general election.
In modern times with automobiles and paved roads and telephones and the internet, the desire to change county seats is much less passionate than it was in California’s early days. No change has been made in county seat designation during the last 113 years.
You can find more detail, including the former location of county seats not now found on maps, on CSAC’s web site at www.counties.org, in the County History section. County historical societies often have information about their old county seats. The California Historical Society’s web site at www.calhist.org has a page listing names and addresses of historical societies for each California county. Also useful are publications of the California Historical Survey Commission. The book Genesis of California Counties by Owen C. Coy, the Commission director and archivist, is especially informative.
John Taylor is the retired clerk of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the author of the educational quiz on California and its Counties presented at annual CSAC conferences.