ZIP Code
A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service in a system it introduced in 1963. The term ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan; the basic format consists of five digits. An extended ZIP+4 code was introduced in 1983 which includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, followed by a hyphen and four additional digits that reference a more specific location; the term ZIP Code was registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, but its registration has since expired; the early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers. The United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example: The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city. By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963; the USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are written with both letters capitalized.
An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems", which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Robert Moon is considered the father of the ZIP Code; the post office only credits Moon with the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or "sec center." An SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The fourth and fifth digits, which give a more precise locale within the SCF, were proposed by Henry Bentley Hahn Sr.
The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes. The mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, most of their employees work the night shift. Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. In the case of large cities, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number thus: In 1967, these became mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, the system was soon adopted generally; the United States Post Office used a cartoon character, which it called Mr. ZIP, to promote the use of the ZIP Code, he was depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODE" in the selvage of panes of postage stamps or on the covers of booklet panes of stamps. In 1971 Elmira Star-Gazette reporter Dick Baumbach found out the White House was not using a ZIP Code on its envelopes.
Herb Klein, special assistant to President Nixon, responded by saying the next printing of envelopes would include the ZIP Code. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4 called "plus-four codes", "add-on codes", or "add-ons". A ZIP+4 Code uses the basic five-digit code plus four additional digits to identify a geographic segment within the five-digit delivery area, such as a city block, a group of apartments, an individual high-volume receiver of mail, a post office box, or any other unit that could use an extra identifier to aid in efficient mail sorting and delivery. However, initial attempts to promote universal use of the new format met with public resistance and today the plus-four code is not required. In general, mail is read by a multiline optical character reader that instantly determines the correct ZIP+4 Code from the address—along with the more specific delivery point—and sprays an Intelligent Mail barcode on the face of the mail piece that corresponds to 11 digits—nine for the ZIP+4 Code and two for the delivery point.
For Post Office Boxes, the general rule is. The add-on code is one of the following: the last four digits of the box number, zero plus the last three digits of the box number, or, if the box number consists of fewer than four digits, enough zeros are attached to the front of the box number to produce a four-digit number. However, there is no uniform rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box; the ZIP Code is translated into an Intelligent Mail barcode, printed on the mailpiece to make it easier for automated machines to sort. A barcode can be printed by the sender, it is better to let the post office put one on. In general, the post office uses OCR technology, though in some cases a human might have to read and enter the address. Customers who send bulk mail can get a discount on postage if they have printed the barcode themselves and have presorted the mai
Gaspar de Portolá
Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira was a Spanish soldier and administrator in New Spain. As commander of the Spanish colonizing expedition on land and sea that established San Diego and Monterey, Portolá expanded New Spain's Las Californias province far to the north from its beginnings on the Baja California peninsula. Portolá's expedition was the first European to see San Francisco Bay; the expedition gave names to geographic features along the way. Portolá was born on January 1, 1716 in Catalonia, Spain, of Catalan nobility. Don Gaspar served as a soldier in the Spanish army in Portugal, he was commissioned ensign in 1734, lieutenant in 1743. Beginning in 1684, Jesuit missionaries started establishing missions on the Baja California Peninsula. Rumors circulated that the Jesuits had amassed a fortune and were becoming powerful; as part of the nearly global suppression of the Jesuits, King Carlos III ordered the Jesuits expelled and deported to the Papal States on the Italian peninsula. Following the command of the king, the Viceroy of New Spain ordered the arrest and deportation of all Jesuits in missions.
Portolá was charged with the expulsion of the Jesuits. The missions were turned over to the Franciscans, to the Dominicans. Spain was driven to establish missions and other outposts on the Pacific Coast north of the Baja California Peninsula by fears that the territory would be claimed by foreign powers; the English, who had established colonies on the East Coast of the continent and north into what is now Canada, had sent explorers into the Pacific. Russian fur hunters were pressing east from Siberia across the Bering Strait into the Aleutian Islands and beyond. Dispatches of January 23, 1768, exchanged between King Carlos and the viceroy, set the wheels in motion to extend Spain's control up the Pacific Coast and establish colonies and missions at San Diego Bay and Monterey Bay, discovered and described in reports by earlier explorers Juan Cabrillo and Sebastián Vizcaíno. Vizcaíno had mapped the California coastline as far north as Monterey in 1602, but not much more was done until 166 years later.
In May 1768, the Spanish Visitor General, José de Gálvez, began to organize an expedition, by sea and by land. Portolá was given overall command. Junípero Serra, leader of the expedition's Franciscan missionaries, took command of spiritual matters. Sea and land detachments were to meet at San Diego Bay; the first ship, the San Carlos, sailed from La Paz on January 10, 1769 and a second, the San Antonio sailed from Cabo San Lucas on February 15. At the same time, the various elements of the land parties began to move north from Loreto, Baja California Sur; the land expedition was assembled at Velicatá. From there, Portolá's plan called for splitting the land expedition in two; the lead group, charged with building a wagon trail and pacifying the natives, was led by Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada, departed from Velicatá on March 24. With Rivera was the priest Juan Crespí, diarist for the Franciscans; the expedition led by Portolá, which included Junípero Serra, along with a combination of missionaries and leather-jacket soldiers, including José Raimundo Carrillo, left Velicata on May 15.
Junípero Serra founded two more missions during the expedition: San Diego de Alcalá on July 16, 1769 and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on June 3, 1770. Rivera reached the site of present-day San Diego in May, established a camp in the area, now Old Town and awaited the arrival of the others; because of an error by Vizcaíno in determining the latitude of the San Diego Harbor, the ships passed by it and landed too far north before finding their way back. The San Antonio arrived on April 11 and the San Carlos, the first ship to leave La Paz, having met with fierce winds and storms on the journey, arrived on April 29. A third vessel was to follow with supplies, but it was lost at sea; the land expedition of Portolá arrived on June 29. After their arduous journeys, most of the men aboard ship were ill, chiefly from scurvy, many had died. Out of a total of 219 who left Baja California, little more than 100 now survived. Eager to press on to Monterey Bay, Portolá and his expedition, consisting of Juan Crespí, 63 leather-jacket soldiers and 100 mules loaded down with provisions, headed north on July 14, 1769.
Marching two to four leagues a day, they reached the site of present-day Fullerton, at Hillcrest Park on July 30, 1769. They next traveled to Brea Canyon, in Brea, California, on July 31, 1769, they arrived in what is now Los Angeles on August 2. The following day, they marched out the Indian trail that would one day become Wilshire Boulevard to the present site of Santa Monica. Winding around to the area of Saugus, now part of Santa Clarita, they reached the area to become Santa Barbara on August 19, the present day San Simeon area on September 13. Unable to remain on the coast due to the steep, difficult terrain, the party turned inland, they marched through the San Antonio Valley and on October 1, Portolá's party emerged from the Santa Lucia Mountains and reached the mouth of the Salinas River. After a march of some 400 miles from San Diego and about 1,000 miles from Velicatá, they had reached the bay they were seeking, but they failed to discern the coastline's semi-circular shape, described by Vizcaíno as round like an "O" though members of the party had twice marched along its beach.
Having failed to find their goal, they marched on north and reached the area at the north end of the bay, where Crespi named a creek Santa Cruz on October 18. Pushing on, they
Race and ethnicity in the United States Census
Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most identify, indicate whether or not they are of Hispanic or Latino origin. The racial categories represent a social-political construct for the race or races that respondents consider themselves to be and, "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country." OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference." The race categories include both national-origin groups. Race and ethnicity are considered separate and distinct identities, with Hispanic or Latino origin asked as a separate question. Thus, in addition to their race or races, all respondents are categorized by membership in one of two ethnic categories, which are "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino".
However, the practice of separating "race" and "ethnicity" as different categories has been criticized both by the American Anthropological Association and members of US Commission on Civil Rights. In 1997, OMB issued a Federal Register notice regarding revisions to the standards for the classification of federal data on race and ethnicity. OMB developed race and ethnic standards in order to provide "consistent data on race and ethnicity throughout the Federal Government; the development of the data standards stem in large measure from new responsibilities to enforce civil rights laws." Among the changes, OMB issued the instruction to "mark one or more races" after noting evidence of increasing numbers of interracial children and wanting to capture the diversity in a measurable way and having received requests by people who wanted to be able to acknowledge their or their children's full ancestry rather than identifying with only one group. Prior to this decision, the Census and other government data collections asked people to report only one race.
The OMB states, "many federal programs are put into effect based on the race data obtained from the decennial census. Race data are critical for the basic research behind many policy decisions. States require these data to meet legislative redistricting requirements; the data are needed to monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act by local jurisdictions". "Data on ethnic groups are important for putting into effect a number of federal statutes. Data on Ethnic Groups are needed by local governments to run programs and meet legislative requirements." The 1790 United States Census was the first census in the history of the United States. The population of the United States was recorded as 3,929,214 as of Census Day, August 2, 1790, as mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution and applicable laws."The law required that every household be visited, that completed census schedules be posted in'two of the most public places within, there to remain for the inspection of all concerned...' and that'the aggregate amount of each description of persons' for every district be transmitted to the president."
This law along with U. S. marshals were responsible for governing the census. One third of the original census data has been lost or destroyed since documentation; the data was lost in 1790–1830 time period and included data from: Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia. Census data included the name of the head of the family and categorized inhabitants as follows: free white males at least 16 years of age, free white males under 16 years of age, free white females, all other free persons, slaves. Thomas Jefferson the Secretary of State, directed marshals to collect data from all thirteen states, from the Southwest Territory; the census was not conducted in Vermont until 1791, after that state's admission to the Union as the 14th state on March 4 of that year. There was some doubt surrounding the numbers, President George Washington and Thomas Jefferson maintained the population was undercounted; the potential reasons Washington and Jefferson may have thought this could be refusal to participate, poor public transportation and roads, spread out population, restraints of current technology.
No microdata from the 1790 population census is available, but aggregate data for small areas and their compatible cartographic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. In 1800 and 1810, the age question regarding free white males was more detailed; the 1820
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory and shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders. Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies by state, states may create other local governments. State governments are allocated power by the people through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in republican principles, each provides for a government, consisting of three branches, each with separate and independent powers: executive and judicial.
States possess a number of rights under the United States Constitution. States and their residents are represented in the United States Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives; each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that directly elects the President of the United States. Additionally, each state has the opportunity to ratify constitutional amendments, with the consent of Congress, two or more states may enter into interstate compacts with one another; the tasks of local law enforcement, public education, public health, regulating intrastate commerce, local transportation and infrastructure have been considered state responsibilities, although all of these now have significant federal funding and regulation as well. Over time, the Constitution has been amended, the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed; the general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the federal government playing a much larger role than it once did.
There is a continuing debate over states' rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states' powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government and the rights of individuals. The Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50. Alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959; the Constitution is silent on the question of whether states have the power to secede from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, held; the 50 U. S. states, in alphabetical order, along with each state's flag: As sovereign entities, each of the 50 states reserves the right to organize its individual government in any way deemed appropriate by its people. As a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they vary with regard to form and substance. No two state governments are identical.
The government of each state is structured in accordance with its individual constitution. Many of these documents more elaborate than their federal counterpart; the Constitution of Alabama, for example, contains 310,296 words – more than 40 times as many as the U. S. Constitution. In practice, each state has adopted the three-branch frame of the federal government: executive and judicial. In each state, the chief executive is called the governor, who serves as both head of state and head of government. All governors are chosen by direct election; the governor may approve or veto bills passed by the state legislature, as well as push for the passage of bills supported by their party. In 44 states, governors have line item veto power. Most states have a plural executive, meaning that the governor is not the only government official in the state responsible for its executive branch. In these states, executive power is distributed amongst other officials, elected by the people independently of the governor—such as the lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, others.
The constitutions of 19 states allow for citizens to remove and replace an elected public official before the end of their term of office through a recall election. Each state follows its own procedures for recall elections, sets its own restrictions on how and how soon after a general election, they may be held. In all states, the legislatures can remove state executive branch officials, including governors, who have committed serious abuses of their power from office; the process of doing so includes impeachment, a trial, in which legislators act as a jury. The primary responsibilities of state legislatures are to enact state laws and appropriate money for the administration of public policy. In all states, if the governor vetoes a bill, it can still become law if the legislature overrides the veto by a two-thirds vote in each chamber. In 49 of the 50 states the legislature consists of two chambers: a lower house (termed the House of Representati
Diurnal temperature variation
In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day. Temperature lag is an important factor in diurnal temperature variation: peak daily temperature occurs after noon, as air keeps net absorbing heat after noon, minimum daily temperature occurs after midnight, indeed occurring during early morning in the hour around dawn, since heat is lost all night long; the analogous annual phenomenon is seasonal lag. As solar energy strikes the earth’s surface each morning, a shallow 1–3-centimetre layer of air directly above the ground is heated by conduction. Heat exchange between this shallow layer of warm air and the cooler air above is inefficient. On a warm summer’s day, for example, air temperatures may vary by 16.5 °C from just above the ground to waist height. Incoming solar radiation exceeds outgoing heat energy for many hours after noon and equilibrium is reached from 3–5 p.m. but this may be affected by a variety of different things such as large bodies of water, soil type and cover, cloud cover/water vapor, moisture on the ground.
Diurnal temperature variations are greatest near Earth's surface. High desert regions have the greatest diurnal-temperature variations, while low-lying humid areas have the least; this explains why an area like the Snake River Plain can have high temperatures of 38 °C during a summer day, have lows of 5–10 °C. At the same time, Washington D. C., much more humid, has temperature variations of only 8 °C. While the National Park Service claimed that the world single-day record is a variation of 102 °F in Browning, Montana in 1916, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality claimed that Loma, Montana had a variation of 102 °F in 1972. Both these extreme daily temperature changes were the result of sharp air-mass changes within a single day; the 1916 event was an extreme temperature drop, resulting from frigid Arctic air from Canada invading northern Montana, displacing a much warmer air mass. The 1972 event was a chinook event, where air from the Pacific Ocean overtopped mountain ranges to the west, warmed in its descent into Montana, displacing frigid Arctic air and causing a drastic temperature rise.
In the absence of such extreme air-mass changes, diurnal temperature variations range from 10 or fewer degrees in humid, tropical areas, to 40-50 degrees in higher-elevation, arid to semi-arid areas, such as parts of the U. S. Western states' Intermountain Plateau areas, for example Elko, Ashton and Burns, Oregon; the higher the humidity is, the lower the diurnal temperature variation is. Diurnal temperature variation is of particular importance in viticulture. Wine regions situated in areas of high altitude experience the most dramatic swing in temperature variation during the course of a day. In grapes, this variation has the effect of producing high acid and high sugar content as the grapes' exposure to sunlight increases the ripening qualities while the sudden drop in temperature at night preserves the balance of natural acids in the grape. Diurnal cycle
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Plumas County, California
Plumas County is a county in the Sierra Nevada of California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,007; the county seat is Quincy, the only incorporated city is Portola. The largest community in the county is East Quincy; the county was named for the Spanish Río de las Plumas. Prior to the California Gold Rush of 1849, the indigenous Mountain Maidu were the primary inhabitants of the area now known as Plumas County; the Maidu lived in small settlements along the edges of valleys, subsisting on roots, grasses and fish and big game. They had no tribal leadership. Areas with high snowfall, including the Mohawk and Sierra valleys, were hunting grounds for game in the warmer months. In 1848, European Americans discovered gold in the Sierra foothills. Miners were attracted to Plumas County in particular due to the tales of Thomas Stoddard, who claimed to have discovered a lake lined with gold nuggets while lost in the wilderness. Gold-hungry prospectors flooded into the area. Though hopeful miners scoured the glacial lakes for months, they did not find the purported lake of gold.
But some had success panning for gold in the rivers and creeks in the area, created squatters' villages, the first non-Native American settlements. Rough shanty towns sprang up around successful mining areas, including Rich Bar, Indian Bar, Rabbit Creek. Many were developed adjacent to the Feather River, named by Spanish explorer Captain Luis Arguello as Río de las Plumas in 1820. In 1850 notable African-American frontiersman James Beckwourth discovered the lowest pass through the Sierras, which became known as Beckwourth Pass. Using the pass, he blazed a trail that began in Western Nevada and went through much of Plumas County terminating in the Sacramento Valley; this trail was followed by many erstwhile miners into Plumas County. Beckwourth set up a trading post in the western Sierra Valley that still stands today. Though the Beckwourth Trail was longer than the original emigrant trail that ran south of Plumas County, its lower elevations extended its seasonal use when the higher trail was snowbound and impassable.
The Beckwourth Trail had heavy use until about 1865, after construction of the transcontinental railroad, when railroads became the favored transportation method for westward-bound travelers. Plumas County was formed in 1854 during a meeting of three commissioners held at the American Ranch in Quincy, it was carved from the eastern portion of Butte County. Quincy a mining town, was chosen as the county seat after an early settler donated a plot of land there to establish the seat. Once it became the seat, nearby Elizabethtown faded and became defunct. In 1864, the state legislature took a large portion of Plumas County to organize Lassen County because of increasing population. Shortly afterward Plumas County annexed part of Sierra County, including the prosperous mining town of La Porte. Over the next decades, different industries drove the growth of the various settlements that sprung up around the county. Greenville began as a farming community in Indian Valley in the late 1850s. Chester was formed near the area, now Lake Almanor, as a result of cattle ranching and the timber industry.
When the Western Pacific Railroad was constructed in 1910, Portola developed as an important railroad stop. Thanks to the railroad, Plumas County could export its lumber beyond the local area, the timber industry became dominant in the county’s economy for decades; as the railroad route extended up the Feather River Canyon, it was used by the area’s first tourists and sightseers. When the Feather River Highway was completed in 1937, through federal investment in infrastructure by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Plumas County became linked to the Sacramento Valley year-round thanks to the route’s low elevation. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 2,613 square miles, of which 2,553 square miles is land and 60 square miles is water. Plumas County is located in the far northern end of the Sierra Nevada range; the area's rugged terrain marks the transition point between the northern Sierra Nevadas and the southern end of the Cascade Range.
Lassen Peak, the southernmost volcanic peak in the Cascade Range, is found just north of Plumas County's border, part of Lassen Volcanic National Park extends into the northwest corner of the county. Plumas National Forest's 1,200,000 acres offer a wide variety of outdoor recreation opportunities, including hiking, kayaking, mountain biking and fishing; the area features more than 100 artificial lakes. Many of the natural lakes are glacial in origin and can be found in and around Lakes Basin Recreation Area; the artificial lakes include Lake Almanor, Lake Davis, Frenchman Lake, Little Grass Valley Reservoir, Antelope Lake, Buck's Lake. Plumas County features more than 1,000 miles of rivers and streams. All three forks of the Feather River run through the area. Butterfly Valley Botanical Area Elephants Playground Happy Valley Little Last Chance Canyon Special Interest Area North Valley Valley Creek Special Interest Area Sierra County - south Yuba County - southwest Butte County - west Tehama County - northwest Shasta County - northwest Lassen County - northeast Lassen National Forest Lassen Volcanic National Park Plumas National Forest Tahoe National Forest The 2010 United States Census reported that Plumas County had a population of 20,007
United States
California
