Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Bishop, CA

Bishop is a city in Inyo County, California, incorporated in 1903, and it remains the only incorporated municipality in all of Inyo County.

Although Bishop is Inyo County's largest populated place, it is not the county seat: the county government sits in Independence, about 55 miles to the south.

The US Census counted 3,879 people inside Bishop's city limits, which cover less than 2 square miles, in 2010, while the wider Bishop urban area held about 11,013 people in 2020.

The 2010 census counted about 1,748 households in Bishop, and in peak visitor season the population of the Bishop area can swell past 30,000 as travelers pass through.

Bishop sits at an elevation of 4,147 feet at the northern end of the Owens Valley, west of the Owens River on US Route 395.

Bishop is named for Bishop Creek, which was itself named for Samuel Addison Bishop, a rancher who settled in the Owens Valley in the early 1860s.

Bishop bills itself as the 'Mule Capital of the World,' and its Bishop Mule Days celebration has run every Memorial Day week since 1969, featuring more than 700 mules in 181 events and one of the largest non-motorized parades in the nation.

About five miles northeast of Bishop, the Laws Railroad Museum and Historic Site preserves the 1883 Carson and Colorado Railroad depot and the narrow-gauge 'Slim Princess' Engine No. 9; the site is California Historical Landmark No. 953 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The railroad through Laws was the last narrow-gauge common carrier operating west of the Rocky Mountains when its final run ended on April 30, 1960.

Bishop's Owens Valley home, the 'Land of Little Rain,' is one of the deepest valleys in the United States, walled in by the Sierra Nevada to the west and the White Mountains to the east.