Dos Palos (Spanish for "Two Timbers")[5] is a city in southern Merced County, California, United States.

Dos Palos is located 27 miles (43 km) south-southwest of Merced, the county seat, at an elevation of 118 feet (36 m).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city covers an area of 1.35 square miles (3.5 km2), all of it land.

[2] In one of his expeditions during the 1820s along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, explorer Gabriel Moraga reported the location of two large isolated poplar trees, which he called "Dos Palos".

In 19th-century Spanish usage, palos was used to describe tall pole-like trees or "timbers".

The "Rancho Sanjon de Santa Rita" Mexican land grant cites "Los Dos Palos" or "The Two Trees" as a boundary marker.

In 1891, former school superintendent Bernhard Marks convinced cattle ranch king Henry Miller to develop a small town nearby.

They gave it the name "Dos Palos Colony" but pronounced it with their ethnic accents (Marks a Polish Jew and Miller an Alsatian German) as "Dahce Palace".

Marks brought forty pioneer families west from Iowa and Nebraska to establish the community.

Marks convinced Miller to establish another town two miles away on land unsuitable for farming and ranching due to swamps and unsettling soils.

The Post Office was briefly misspelled as one word, "Dospalos" but this was changed within a year.

[12] Members of the Dos Palos City Council serve four year terms.