Calaveras Big Trees State Park, a preserve of giant sequoia trees, is in the county several miles east of the town of Arnold on State Highway 4. Credit for the discovery of giant sequoias there is given to Augustus T. Dowd, a trapper who made the discovery in 1852 while tracking a bear.

The county hosts an annual fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, featuring a frog-jumping contest, to celebrate the association with Twain's story.

Each year's winner is commemorated with a brass plaque mounted in the sidewalk of downtown Historic Angels Camp and this feature is known as the Frog Hop of Fame.

Lukas Foss used Twain's story for his 1950 opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

In 2015, Calaveras County had the highest rate of suicide deaths in the United States, with 49.1 per 100,000 people.

He believed they had either died of famine or been killed in tribal conflicts over hunting and fishing grounds.

The Stanislaus River, which forms the southern boundary, is named for Estanislao, a Lakisamni Yokuts who escaped from Mission San José in the late 1830s.

He is reported to have raised a small group of men with crude weapons, hiding in the foothills when the Mexicans attacked.

In 1836, John Marsh, Jose Noriega, and a party of men went exploring in Northern California.

Gold prospecting in Calaveras County began in late 1848 with a camp founded by Henry Angel.

Angel may have first arrived in California as a soldier, serving under Colonel Frémont during the Mexican War.

After the war's end, he found himself in Monterey where he heard of the fabulous finds in the gold fields.

Placer mining soon gave out around the camp, but an extensive gold-bearing quartz vein of the area's Mother Lode was located by the Winter brothers during the mid-1850s, and this brought in the foundations of a permanent town.

Five major mines worked the rich vein: the Stickle, the Utica, the Lightner, the Angels, and the Sultana.

[13] The telluride mineral calaverite was first recognized and obtained in 1861 from the Stanislaus Mine, Carson Hill, Angels Camp, in Calaveras Co., California.

Calaveras County is in California's 5th congressional district, represented by Republican Tom McClintock.

Calaveras Connect provides service in Angels Camp, San Andreas, and other communities in the county.