[11] Inyo County is on the east side of the Sierra Nevada and southeast of Yosemite National Park in Central California.

Present-day Inyo county has been the historic homeland for thousands of years of the Mono, Timbisha, Kawaiisu, and Northern Paiute Native Americans.

For many years it has been commonly believed that the county derived its name from the Mono tribe's name for the mountains in its former homeland.

[citation needed] Inyo was the name of the headman of one of the Timbisha bands at the time of contact when the first whites, the Bennett-Arcane Party of 1849, wandered, lost, into Death Valley on their expedition to the gold fields of western California.

The Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, the lowest place in North America, is in eastern Inyo County.

[14] Death Valley National Monument was proclaimed in 1933, placing the area under federal protection.

In 1994, the monument was redesignated a national park, as well as being substantially expanded to include Saline and Eureka Valleys.

Some examples include Creosote Bush, Bighorn Sheep, Coyote, and the Death Valley Pupfish, a survivor of much wetter times.

[15] Death Valley National Park is visited annually by more than 770,000 visitors who come to enjoy its diverse geologic features, desert wildlife, historic sites, scenery, clear night skies, and the solitude of the extreme desert environment.

Inyo has historically been a strongly Republican county in Presidential and congressional elections.

However, the county shifted significantly leftward in 2020, narrowly supporting Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

[38] On November 4, 2008, Inyo County voted 60.6% for Proposition 8 which amended the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriages.

Although the county was typically Democratic before World War II, in the decades since Japanese internment the county has been solidly Republican, only voting for Lyndon Johnson (who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and Joe Biden (who ran on a ticket with Kamala Harris, the first Asian American to be part of a major party ticket).

The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense.

Higher education in Inyo County is provided by the Kern Community College District.

In the 1920s, automobile clubs and nearby towns started to lobby for trans-Sierra highways over Piute Pass[42] and other locations.

The expansion of the John Muir and Ansel Adams Wildernesses in the 1980s sealed off the Minaret Summit route.

Service extends south to Lancaster (Los Angeles County) and north to Reno, Nevada.

Source:[46] The population ranking of the following table is based on the 2010 census of Inyo County.