About Stanislaus County

Stanislaus County is a county located in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 514,453 up from 446,997 at the 2000 census. The county seat is Modesto.

Stanislaus County is included in the Modesto Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The county is named for the Stanislaus River, first discovered by a European, Gabriel Moraga, in 1806, and later renamed Rio Estanislao in honor of Estanislao, a mission-educated renegade Native American chief who led a band of Indians in a series of battles against Mexican troops until finally being defeated by General Mariano Vallejo in 1826. Estanislao was his baptismal name, the Spanish version of Stanislaus, itself the Latin version of the name of an 11th-century Polish Catholic Saint Stanislaus the Martyr.

Stanislaus County was formed from part of Tuolumne County in 1854.The first county seat was situated at Adamsville, then moved to Empire in November, then to La Grange in December, then to Knights Ferry in 1862, and definitely fixed at the present location in Modesto in 1871.

Stanisławów was founded as a fortress in 1650 in Europe and was named after the Polish hetman Stanisław "Rewera" Potocki, although other sources claim it was named after his grandson (see History of Ivano-Frankivsk). In 1772 its name was transliterated into German as Stanislau when it became part of the Austrian Empire and later Austria-Hungary; however, after the revolution of 1848 the city carried three different linguistic renderings of its name: German, Polish, and Ruthenian (German: Stanislau; Polish: Stanisławów; Ukrainian: Станиславів, Stanyslaviv). Other spellings used in the local press-media included: Russian: Станиславов and Yiddish: סטאַניסלאוו.

Stanislaus County has historically been divided socially and economically by the north-flowing San Joaquin River, which provided a natural barrier to trade and travel for much of the county's history. Isolated from the main rail corridors through the county and the irrigation projects that generated much of the region's economic prosperity, the part of Stanislaus County west of the river (known to locals as the "West Side" of the county) has largely remained rural and economically dependent on agricultural activities. Because of its proximity to Interstate 5 and the California Aqueduct some towns within this area, including Patterson and Newman, have experienced tremendous growth and are being transformed into bedroom communities for commuters from the nearby San Francisco Bay Area, while others (including Westley and Crows Landing) have been almost entirely overlooked by development and remain tiny farming communities.