El Camino (Spanish for "The Path") is a rural community and irrigation district near Gerber in Tehama County, in the U.S. state of California.

[3][4][5] Historically, the district was a subdivision, in California law, of what used to be the Finnell Ranch, which in the early 20th century was part of the El Camino Colony.

[8] At one point Finnell owned 50,000 acres (20,000 ha) for his cattle operations, stretching from Proberta to Corning and including range land in the mountains.

[10] The ranch was originally a 22,095 acres (8,942 ha) land grant to Robert Hasty Thomas called Rancho de Los Saucos or Rancho de Thomes,[11] and the brick house erected by Robert Thomes there somewhere around the late 1860s or early 1870s stood on Finnell Ranch until 1943, when it was destroyed by fire.

[20] Based on 1990 census data, a United States Department of Agriculture report found that the population of the Richfield-El Camino "block group" within Tehama County was 961.

[21] In 2007, a proposal to reclassify the district from composite cropland to valley floor agricultural in an effort to limit further residential growth was a topic of controversy within the El Camino community.