El Camino Real passes through the county and includes one mission in San Juan Bautista.

Before the arrival of the first European settlers, the San Benito County area was inhabited by the Mutsun sub-group of the Ohlone Native Americans.

In 1797 Spanish missionaries founded the first European settlement in the county as the San Juan Bautista mission.

When the mine played out fairly recently in 1972, New Idria was abandoned, and the town is now one of California's many ghost-towns.

The county is also the location of the Mount Harlan and San Benito American Viticultural Areas.

Common vegetation types include annual grasslands, coastal scrub, chaparral, and oak woodland.

In the extreme southeastern portion of San Benito County at Panoche Valley, Panoche Hills, Tumey Hills, and Vallecitos, the climate is arid and part of the recently recognized San Joaquin Desert biome.

At the highest elevations of San Benito County at Fremont Peak and San Benito Mountain, the average annual precipitation is high enough and the average annual temperature is cool enough to support mixed conifer forest.

The extreme conditions of the serpentine soils of the New Idria serpentine mass support many rare local endemic plant species including San Benito evening primrose (Camissonia benitensis),[9] rayless layia (Layia discoidea),[10] Guirado's goldenrod (Solidago guiradonis),[11] and San Benito fritillary (Fritillaria viridea).

benitensis,[15] and Arctostaphylos benitoensis[16] were named in recognition of their being endemic or near-endemic to San Benito County.

County government is overseen by a five-member elected Board of Supervisors, who serve four-year terms of office.

The Sheriff is contracted to provide law enforcement service to the incorporated City of San Juan Bautista.

[39] As of May 2010, the California Secretary of State reports that San Benito County has 34,562 eligible voters.

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

The economy is statistically included in metro San Jose, though the dominant activity is agriculture.

Agritourism is growing as the county has destination wineries, organic farms and quaint inns with views of cattle grazing.

With concerns about how oil and gas operations could impact this sector of the economy and agriculture in general, the county voters approved a measure in 2014 that bans well stimulation techniques such as fracking, acidizing and steam injection, along with conventional drilling in some areas.

In the 1950s, the oil drilling industry had many wells and the county is over the Monterey Shale formation but there is very little activity now.

The county also has several media outlets that serve the local community: CMAP TV - Community Media Access Partnership, based in Gilroy, operates Channels 17, 18, 19 & 20 on Charter/Spectrum Cable as well as streaming online, offering public access and educational programming to Gilroy and San Benito County as well as offering live civic meetings, including county government.