Bishop is the only incorporated city in Inyo County, California, United States. It is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley in the Mojave Desert, at an elevation of . The city was named after Bishop Creek, flowing out of the Sierra Nevada range; the creek was named after Samuel Addison Bishop, a settler in the Owens Valley. Bishop is a commercial and residential center, while many vacation destinations and tourist attractions in the Sierra Nevada are located nearby. The city covers approximately , making it the county's largest community by population and land area.
The population of the city limits was 3,819 at the 2020 census, down from 3,879 at the 2010 census. Bishop is the main hub of the Bishop Micropolitan Statistical area where the population of the built-up zone around Bishop at the time of the 2020 census was 19,016. This includes the surrounding unincorporated communities of West Bishop, Dixon Lane-Meadow Creek, the Bishop Paiute Reservation, Rocking K Ranch, Mustang Mesa, Round Valley, Bishop Creek, Aspendell, Starlite and Chalfant Valley.
A number of western films were shot in Bishop, including movies starring John Wayne, Charlton Heston, and Joel McCrea.Schneider, Jerry L. (2016). Western Filming Locations California, Book 6. CP Entertainment Books. Page 149. .
History
Indigenous people
The area around Bishop was inhabited in late prehistoric times by the Eastern Mono (also called Owens Valley Paiute). The Eastern Mono speak a dialect of the Mono language, which is also Numic but is more closely related to Northern Paiute. The Mono people were predominantly sedentary and settled in fixed settlements along rivers or springs which were fed by snowmelt from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The Eastern Mono spent part of the year foraging across the Owens Valley. The more intensive arable farming by means of partly artificial irrigation enabled them to build up food reserves and feed larger groups. The Eastern Mono presently live in and near Bishop. In 1912, the Eastern Mono reservation was established at , but in 1932, Herbert Hoover revoked the reservation and restricted the Bishop Paiute Tribe to next to the town of Bishop, in order to grant water rights to the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
First American settlers
The first American explorers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California included the mountain men Jedediah Smith in 1833 and Joseph Walker in 1834. This remote area of California had never been explored by the Spanish although it appeared as Mexican territory on early maps.
Explorer John C. Fremont was an early US Army visitor to the region. Officially sanctioned by the federal government, his 1845 mapping party to the Eastern Sierra included the scout Kit Carson, for whom the capital of Nevada, Carson City, was named. Also in the party were Ed Kern for whom Kern County, California was named and Richard Owens, for whom Owens Lake and Owens Valley were named.
The city of Bishop was established due to the need for beef in Aurora, Nevada, a mining camp eighty miles to the north. Aurora was believed to be on the California side of the border at that time and was the county seat of Mono County. In 1861 cattlemen drove herds of cattle three hundred miles from the San Joaquin Valley of California through the southern Sierra at Walker Pass, up the Owens Valley, and then through Adobe Meadows to Aurora.
To avoid the long journey from the other side of the mountains, a few cattlemen decided to settle in the valley. Driving about 600 head of cattle and 50 horses, Samuel Addison Bishop, his wife, and several hired hands arrived in the Owens Valley on August 22, 1861, from Fort Tejon in the Tehachapi Mountains. Along with Henry Vansickle, Charles Putnam, Allen Van Fleet, and the McGee brothers, Bishop was one of the first white settlers in the valley. The town was named after Samuel Bishop.
Sheepmen soon followed the cattlemen and initially struggled due to a lack of forage for their stock in the area. Remnants of the early settlers' stone corrals and fences still exist north of Bishop along Highway 395 in Round Valley, California. Samuel Bishop set up a market to sell beef to the miners and business owners in Aurora. One of the residents of Aurora at that time was a young Samuel Clemens, who later gained fame as author Mark Twain. By 1862, a frontier settlement known as Bishop Creek was established two miles east of the San Francis Ranch. The only remnant of Samuel Bishop's ranch is a monument placed near the original site at the corner of Highway 168 West and Red Hill Road, two miles west of downtown Bishop.
In 1866, the County of Inyo was established from part of Tulare County. The Eastern High Sierra/Owens Valley region was the westernmost populated frontier of the U.S. at that time. In 1871, Daniel Bruhn was one of 41 wranglers herding nearly 3,000 wild Spanish mustangs from Stockton, California to Texas. Some descendants of those mustangs still roam on the California/Nevada border just north of Bishop. The first Bishop post office opened in 1889.
Water conflicts of the Owens Valley
As Los Angeles expanded during the late 19th century, it began outgrowing its water supply. Fred Eaton, mayor of Los Angeles, promoted a plan to take water from Owens Valley, where Bishop lies, to Los Angeles via an aqueduct. Between 1905 and 1907, most of the land in the Owens Valley was purchased from farmers and ranchers at bargain prices by Eaton, ostensibly for a his own use. The real goal was to send Owens Valley water south to Los Angeles. In 1907, Eaton traveled to Washington to meet with advisers of Theodore Roosevelt to convince them that the water of the Owens River would do more good flowing through faucets in Los Angeles than it would if used on Owens Valley fields and orchards. Despite a political fight with Congressman Sylvester Smith, who represented the area around Bishop, Roosevelt decided in favor of the aqueduct.
The aqueduct was built from 1907 to 1913 under the supervision of William Mullholland. The aqueduct is long, used no pumping stations; only gravity siphons. From the 1910s to 1930s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased much of the valley for water rights and control. The result was a substantial change to the Owens Valley culture and environment. The economy of Bishop suffered when farmers, ranchers and land owners sold much of their property. By 1928, Los Angeles owned 90 percent of the land and subsequent water rights in Owens Valley rendering all agriculture, economic and development interests in the region effectively dead. With the diversion of water to Los Angeles, the Owens Lake and lower Owens River dried up, forcing many valley residents to leave the area. For a number of years, Owens Valley residents expressed much animosity toward the city of Los Angeles; for example, in Dry Ditches, a book of poems published in 1934 by the Parcher family of Bishop. Jack Foley, a Bishop resident and sound effects specialist, mitigated the economic loss by persuading several Los Angeles studio bosses that the town of Bishop would be ideal as a location to shoot westerns.
Geography
Bishop lies west of the Owens River at the northern end of the Owens Valley. The city is located on U.S. Route 395, the main north–south artery through the Owens Valley, connecting the Inland Empire to Reno, Nevada. US 395 also connects Bishop to Los Angeles via State Route 14 through Palmdale. Bishop is the western terminus of U.S. Route 6. The Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community of the Bishop Colony control land just west of the town. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) controls much of the upstream and surrounding area.
Bishop is immediately to the east of the Sierra Nevada, and west of the White Mountains. Numerous peaks are within a short distance of Bishop, including Mount Humphreys () to the west, White Mountain Peak () to the northeast, and pyramidal Mount Tom () northwest of town. Basin Mountain () is viewed to the west from Bishop as it rises above the Buttermilks. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , over 97% of it land. Bishop is known as the "Mule Capital of the World" and a week-long festival called Bishop Mule Days has been held since 1969 during the week of Memorial Day, celebrating the contributions of pack mules to the area. The festival attracts many tourists, primarily from the Southern California area."Mule Days," American Cowboy , May/June 1999, p.54.
Bishop is well known in the rock climbing community. Near the city are numerous climbing spots that attract visitors from around the world. There are over 2,000 bouldering locations in Bishop. The two main types of rock are volcanic tuff at the Happy and Sad boulders and quartz monzonite at the Buttermilks.
Notable locations Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest Bishop Petroglyphs Bishop Area Chamber of Commerce Bishop Visitors Bureau Eastern Sierra Regional Airport Inyo National Forest Supervisor's Office Keoughs Hot Springs Laws Rail Museum Paiute Indian Reservation Paiute-Shoshone Cultural Center Museum
Climate Bishop, as with the rest of the Owens Valley, has a cool arid climate (Köppen BWk) with an annual average of of precipitation, and is part of USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7b. The wettest "rain year" was from July 1968 to June 1969 with of precipitation and the driest from July 2006 to June 2007 with only . Measurable precipitation occurs on an average of 26 days annually. The most precipitation in one month was in January 1969, and the most precipitation in 24 hours on January 4, 2008. Snowfall averages per season. The snowiest season was from July 1968 to June 1969 with , which included the snowiest month, February 1969, at . Contrariwise, between July 1974 and June 1975 and again between July 2023 and June 2024, only a trace of snow fell over an entire year.
There is an average of three mornings where the low drops to or below , 139 mornings where the low reaches the freezing mark, 104 afternoons with maxima at or above , and 29 afternoons with highs at or above . Due to the aridity and hot high-altitude sun, there are only 34 days with maxima below , and only one per year with a maximum below freezing, whilst the annual diurnal temperature variation is , and reaches during the summer. The record high temperature of occurred on July 10, 2021; the record low of was recorded on December 22, 1990, and December 27, 1988. A hotter climate in recent decades has contributed to the three days of December 1990 being the last to fall to or below .
Cold daytime highs and warm nights are rare, but have happened on occasion. The coldest daytime maximum measured was on January 22, 1962. Ice days are infrequent with the warmer climate of recent decades. Between 1991 and 2020 the coldest maximum temperature of the year averaged with the coldest days barely remaining below freezing. The warmest night on record was on August 4, 1961, while the average warmest night each year stands at .
Demographics
The demographic information here applies to residents living within the city limits of Bishop; 3,879 people are in downtown Bishop.
The "greater Bishop area," which includes unincorporated nearby neighborhoods such as West Bishop, Meadow Creek-Dixon Lane, Wilkerson Ranch, Rocking K, Mustang Mesa, Round Valley and the Bishop Paiute Tribe add an additional 15,000 residents to the greater Bishop area.
2020 census As of the 2020 census, Bishop had a population of 3,819. The population density was .
The median age was 41.0 years. 19.7% of residents were under the age of 18 and 19.5% were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females, there were 97.7 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.2 males age 18 and over.