California County List and Cities within the County

Alameda	Kings	Orange	Sierra
Alpine	Lake	Placer	Siskiyou
Amador	Lassen	Plumas	Solano
Butte	Los Angeles	Riverside	Sonoma
Calaveras	Madera	Sacramento	Stanislaus
Colusa	Marin	San Benito	Sutter
Contra Costa	Mariposa	San Diego	Tehema
Del Norte	Mendocino	San Francisco	Trinity
El Dorado	Merced	San Joaquin	Tulare
Fresno	Modoc	San Luis Obispo	Tuolumne
Glenn	Mono	San Mateo	Ventura
Humboldt	Monterey	Santa Barbara	Yolo
Imperial	Napa	Santa Clara	Yuba
Inyo	Nevada	Santa Cruz
Kern		Shasta

California County list History

On January 1850, there were 18 original counties in California. They were Sutter, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, San Jose, San Joaquin, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Redding, Oro, Mount Diablo, Monterey, Mariposa, Los Angeles, Fremont, Butte and Benicia. The counties of Branciforte, Calaveras, Coloma, Colusi, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Trinity, and Yuba were added On April 22. Some Counties were renamed, Yola to Yolo, Colusi to Colusa, Benicia to Solano, Fremont to Yola, Coloma to El Dorado, 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.

In 1907, Imperial County was the last California county to have been established.

Currently, California has 58 counties.