Place:Inyo, California, United States

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source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


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Inyo County is a county in the eastern central part of the U.S. state of California, located between the Sierra Nevada and the state of Nevada. In the 2020 census, the population was 19,016. The county seat is Independence. Inyo County is on the east side of the Sierra Nevada and southeast of Yosemite National Park in Central California. It contains the Owens River Valley; it is flanked to the west by the Sierra Nevada and to the east by the White Mountains and the Inyo Mountains. With an area of 10,192 square miles (26,397 km2), Inyo County is the second-largest county by area in California, after San Bernardino County. Almost one-half of that area is within Death Valley National Park. However, with a population density of 1.8 people per square mile, it also has the second-lowest population density in California, after Alpine County.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Present-day Inyo county has been the for thousands of years of the Mono, Timbisha, Kawaiisu, and Northern Paiute Native Americans. The descendants of these ancestors continue to live in their traditional homelands in the Owens River Valley and in Death Valley National Park.


Inyo County was formed in 1866 out of the territory of the unorganized Coso County, which had been created on April 4, 1864, from parts of Mono County and Tulare County. It acquired more territory from Mono County in 1870 and Kern County and San Bernardino County in 1872.

For many years it has been commonly believed that the county derived its name from the Mono tribe's name for the mountains in its former homeland. Actually the name came to be thought of, mistakenly, as the name of the mountains to the east of the Owens Valley when the first whites there asked the local Owens Valley Paiutes for the name of the mountains to the east. They responded that that was the land of Inyo. They meant by this that those lands belonged to the Timbisha tribe headed by a man whose name was Inyo. Inyo was the name of the headman of one of the Timbisha bands at the time of contact when the first whites, the Bennett-Arcane Party of 1849, wandered, lost, into Death Valley on their expedition to the gold fields of western California. The Owens Valley whites misunderstood the reference and thought that Inyo was the name of the mountains when actually it was the name of the chief, or headman, of the tribe that had those mountains as part of their homeland. In Timbisha, ɨnnɨyun means "it's (or he's) dangerous".

To supply the growing City of Los Angeles, water was diverted from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. The Owens River Valley cultures and environments changed substantially. From the 1910s to 1930s the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased much of the valley for water rights and control. In 1941 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power extended the Los Angeles Aqueduct system farther upriver into the Mono Basin.

Natural History

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Inyo County is host to a number of natural superlatives. Among them are:

Timeline

Date Event Source
1866 County formed Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1866 Court records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1866 Land records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1866 Probate records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1870 First census Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1873 Marriage records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1880 No significant boundary changes after this year Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1905 Birth records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
Census Year Population
1870 1,956
1880 2,928
1890 3,544
1900 4,377
1910 6,974
1920 7,031
1930 6,555
1940 7,625
1950 11,658
1960 11,684
1970 15,571
1980 17,895
1990 18,281

Cemeteries

Cemeteries of Inyo County, California, United States

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