Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Bellview Ranch Merced, CA

Merced is the county seat of Merced County in the San Joaquin Valley and was founded in 1872 by the Central Pacific Railroad, whose town-site agent Charles Henry Huffman laid out the town.

Merced grew out of an 1871 settlement called Bear Creek, and within a year of its founding it won the county seat away from Snelling in an 1872 election helped by the railroad's gift of a courthouse square.

Merced is named for the nearby Merced River, called El Río de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, or River of Our Lady of Mercy, by Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga in 1806.

Merced was incorporated on April 1, 1889, and operates as a charter city under a council-manager government.

Merced is famous as the Gateway to Yosemite: Yosemite National Park lies about 45 miles to the northeast, and from 1907 the Yosemite Valley Railroad carried tourists from Merced to the park entrance at El Portal.

UC Merced opened in September 2005 as the tenth campus of the University of California, the first new UC campus in 40 years, the first UC campus in the San Joaquin Valley, and the first American research university built in the 21st century.

The UC Merced campus sits beside Lake Yosemite on about 7,030 acres donated through the Virginia Smith Trust, the largest acreage the University of California has ever acquired for a single campus.

Merced is also home to Merced College, a community college founded in 1962.

Merced had a population of 86,333 at the 2020 census, up from 78,958 in 2010, and it is a young city with a median age of about 30.5 years.

Merced has about 27,950 households averaging 3.25 persons each, but only about 46% of its homes are owner-occupied, according to Census QuickFacts.