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 1.9 square miles (4.9 km2), making it the county's largest community by population and land area.

A number of western films were shot in Bishop, including movies starring John Wayne, Charlton Heston, and Joel McCrea.

"[citation needed] The first American explorers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California included the famous mountain men Jedediah Smith in 1833[7] and Joseph Walker in 1834.

[8]: 144  This remote area of California had never been explored by the Spanish and even though it was shown as Mexican territory on early maps, the Eastern Sierra region remained unvisited by them.

He was the first Republican candidate to run for President of the United States in 1856 and later a famous Union Civil War general.

Fremont lost a cannon which he had brought along in case of Indian attacks near present-day Bridgeport, California (about 80 miles [130 km] north of Bishop).

[citation needed] The city of Bishop came into being due to the need for beef in a booming mining camp some eighty miles to the north, Aurora, Nevada, (Aurora was believed to be on the California side of the border at that time and was the county seat of Mono County, California).

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.

Establishing a homestead, the San Francis Ranch, along the creek which still bears his name, Samuel Bishop set up a market to sell beef to the miners and business owners in Aurora.

By 1862, a frontier settlement (and later town), known as Bishop Creek, was established a couple of miles east of the San Francis Ranch.

Though the town continues to prosper, the only reminder of Samuel Bishop's ranch today 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 1871, Daniel Bruhn was one of 41 wranglers herding nearly 3,000 wild Spanish mustangs from Stockton, California to Texas.

Their travels brought them over the High Sierra and into the remote Owens Valley, where they lost over 500 head of horses.

[9] 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.

[12] Despite a political fight with Congressman Sylvester Smith, who represented the area around Bishop, Roosevelt decided in favor of the aqueduct.

[14] By 1928, Los Angeles owned 90 percent of the water in Owens Valley and agriculture interests in the region were effectively dead.

[7] For a number of years, Owens Valley residents expressed much animosity toward the city of Los Angeles;[7][15] for example, in Dry Ditches, a book of poems published in 1934 by the Parcher family of Bishop.

The Owens Valley–city of Los Angeles conflict was the inspiration of the 1974 film Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson.

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.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) controls much of the upstream and surrounding area.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.9 square miles (4.9 km2), over 97% of it land.

The two main types of rock are volcanic tuff (at the Happy and Sad boulders) and granite (at the Buttermilks).

[20] Bishop, as well as the rest of the Owens Valley, has an arid climate (Köppen BWk) with an annual average of 4.84 inches (123 mm) of precipitation, and is part of USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7b.

Due to the aridity and hot high-altitude sun, there are only 34 days with maxima below 50 °F (10 °C) and only one per year with a maximum below 32 °F (0 °C),[27] and the annual diurnal temperature variation is 36.9 °F (20.5 °C), reaching 42 °F (23 °C) in summer.

Diurnals are wide enough that temperatures both during summer and winter afternoons resemble Southern Spain's interior, whereas nights in both seasons are similar to those found on the Baltic Sea in far northern Europe.

[37] Bishop maintains its own police force, but also has a substation of the Inyo County Sheriff's Department on the outskirts of the city.

[40] Eastern Sierra Transit offers bus service as far north as Reno, Nevada, and as far south as Lancaster, California.