Tulare County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 473,117. The county seat is Visalia.The county is named for Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes. Drained for agricultural development, the site is now in Kings County, which was created in 1893 from the western portion of the formerly larger Tulare County.
Tulare County comprises the Visalia-Porterville, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is located south of Fresno, spanning from the San Joaquin Valley east to the Sierra Nevada.
Sequoia National Park is located in the county, as is part of Kings Canyon National Park, in its northeast corner (shared with Fresno County), and part of Mount Whitney, on its eastern border (shared with Inyo County). As of the 2020 census, the population was 473,117, up from 442,179 at the 2010 census.
The land was occupied for thousands of years by the Yokuts. Beginning in the eighteenth century, Spain established missions to colonize California and convert the American Indians to Christianity. Comandante Pedro Fages, while hunting for deserters in the Central Valley in 1772, discovered a great lake surrounded by marshes and filled with rushes; he named it Los Tules (the tules). It is from this lake that the county derives its name. The root of the name Tulare is found in the Nahuatl word tullin, designating cattail or similar reeds.
In 1805, 1806 and again in 1816, the Spanish out of Mission San Luis Obispo explored Lake Tulare.Bubal was a native village located on the Western side of Lake Tulare. In 1816, Fr. Luis Martinez of Mission San Luis Obispo arrived at Bubal with soldiers and armed Christian Northern Chumash pressuring the people to send their children for baptism at his mission on the coast. Conflict broke out, and Martinez’s party burned Bubal to the ground, destroying the cache of food harvested for the winter. Although Bubal’s relationship with the Christian Salinas under Fr. Cabot at Mission San Miguel was better; between 1816 and 1834, Bubal was a center of native resistance. The marshes around Lake Tulare were impenetrable by Spanish horses, which gave the Yokuts a military advantage. At one point, the Spanish considered building a presidio with 100 soldiers at Bubal to control the resistance, but that never came to pass. The Spanish called the natives of the area Tulareños, and before 1816 and after 1834, they were incorporated into Mission San Miguel and Mission San Luis Obispo.
After Mexico achieved independence, it continued to rule California. After the Mexican Cession and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the area became part of the United States. Tulare County was soon formed from parts of Mariposa County only four years later in 1852. There were two early attempts to split off a new Buena Vista County in 1855 and Coso County in 1864, but both failed. Parts of the county’s territory were given to Fresno County in 1856, to Kern County and Inyo County in 1866 and to Kings County in 1893.
The infectious disease Tularemia caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis is named after Tulare County.
In 1908 Colonel Allen Allensworth and associates founded the town of Allensworth as a black farming community. They intended to develop a place where African Americans could thrive free of white discrimination. It was the only community in California founded, financed and governed by African Americans. While its first years were highly successful, the community encountered environmental problems from dropping water tables which eventually caused it to fail. Today the historic area is preserved as the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tulare County was formed in 1852 from parts of Mariposa County.
The first Tulare County Courthouse was a small log cabin “surrounded by a cheap fence” in the county seat of Visalia, California. The fence enclosed the county jail, which was five tree stumps with attached iron rings; prisoners were chained to the rings for security, and county officials stored records “in their hats and pockets.” E. Jacobs described Visalia as “a weak and primitive settlement”. A more permanent courthouse and jail were erected after a March 1854 County Board of Supervisors meeting. The second county courthouse was built in 1859, a two-story brick structure with a basement and a footprint of 40 by 60 feet (12 m × 18 m).
The state legislature authorized the county to issue bonds to build a new courthouse in 1875. However, since the Southern Pacific railroad had bypassed Visalia when it built its route through Tulare County in 1872, the choice to locate the courthouse in Visalia was controversial, and the citizens of Visalia campaigned to have the new courthouse built in the city to ensure its survival, The County Board of Supervisors met on April 10, 1876 to plan for the erection of a new courthouse;the cornerstone was laid on October 28.The original County Courthouse and Jail was sold at auction. The 1876 Courthouse was designed by A. A. Bennett, Esq., of San Francisco and had two courtrooms (one for the county, and one for the district). The brick building had a footprint of 60 by 95 feet (18 m × 29 m) (W×D), with wings on either side measuring 12 by 31 feet (3.7 m × 9.4 m) (W×D).
Planning for a new courthouse started in November 1922, when the Board announced it had obtained an option to purchase five blocks for the new facility.The new courthouse was not completed until 1935.
The present courthouse was completed in 1957 to a design by David Horn.Upon completion, payments to Horn were delayed over allegations of poor workmanship and faulty design.
Address: 221 S Mooney Blvd # 201, Visalia, CA 93291
Hours:
Friday | 8 AM–5 PM |
Saturday | Closed |
Sunday | Closed |
Monday | 8 AM–5 PM |
Tuesday | 8 AM–5 PM |
Wednesday | 8 AM–5 PM |
Thursday | 8 AM–5 PM |
Phone: (559) 730-5000
Website: https://www.tulare.courts.ca.gov
Located in: South County Justice Center
Address: 300 E Olive Ave, Porterville, CA 93257
Hours:
Friday | 8 AM–4 PM |
Saturday | Closed |
Sunday | Closed |
Monday | 8 AM–4 PM |
Tuesday | 8 AM–4 PM |
Wednesday | 8 AM–4 PM |
Thursday | 8 AM–4 PM |
Phone: (559) 782-3700
Website: https://www.tulare.courts.ca.gov
Courthouse in Dinuba, California
Address: 640 S Alta Ave, Dinuba, CA 93618
Phone: (559) 595-6400
Website: https://www.tulare.courts.ca.gov
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