San Joaquin County is a county located in Central Valley of the U.S. state of California, just east of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 685,306. The county seat is Stockton.
History
San Joaquin County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood.
The county takes its name from the San Joaquin River. In the early 19th century Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga, commanding an expedition in the lower great California Central Valley, gave the name of San Joaquin (meaning Joachim) to a rivulet that springs from the Sierra Nevada and empties into Buena Vista Lake. San Joaquin County is also home to the site of the San Joaquin Valley's first permanent residence.
Between 1843 and 1846, during the era when California was a province of independent Mexico, five Mexican land grants where made in what became San Joaquin County: Campo de los Franceses, Pescadero (Grimes), Pescadero (Pico), Sanjon de los Moquelumnes and Thompson.
Tracy tire fire
On August 7, 1998, a tire fire ignited at S.F. Royster's Tire Disposal just south of Tracy on South MacArthur Drive, near Linne Rd. The tire dump held over 7 million illegally stored tires and was allowed to burn for over two years before it was extinguished. Allowing the fire to burn was considered to be a better way to avoid groundwater contamination than putting it out. The cleanup cost $16.2 million and wound up contaminating local groundwater anyway.
Geography
According to the 2000 census, the county has a total area of 1,426.25 square miles (3,694.0 km2), of which 1,399.28 square miles (3,624.1 km2) (or 98.11%) is land and 26.97 square miles (69.9 km2) (or 1.89%) is water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Joaquin_County
