Tulare County comprises the Visalia-Porterville, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The county is located south of Fresno, spanning from the San Joaquin Valley east to the Sierra Nevada.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, Spain established missions to colonize California and convert the American Indians to Christianity.

The root of the name Tulare is found in the Nahuatl word tullin, designating cattail or similar reeds.

Luis Martinez of Mission San Luis Obispo arrived at Bubal with soldiers and armed Christian Northern Chumash pressuring the people to send their children for baptism at his mission on the coast.

Conflict broke out, and Martinez's party burned Bubal to the ground, destroying the cache of food harvested for the winter.

The marshes around Lake Tulare were impenetrable by Spanish horses, which gave the Yokuts a military advantage.

At one point, the Spanish considered building a presidio with 100 soldiers at Bubal to control the resistance, but that never came to pass.

After the Mexican Cession and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the area became part of the United States.

The infectious disease Tularemia caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis is named after Tulare County.

They intended to develop a place where African Americans could thrive free of white discrimination.

While its first years were highly successful, the community encountered environmental problems from dropping water tables which eventually caused it to fail.

Tulare County is rich in native plant species due in part to a diversity in habitats, including creeks, rivers, hills, and mountains.

Native plants include incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), valley oak (Quercus lobata), California bay (Umbellularia californica), manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita), Salvia spathacea, mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus betuloides), milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), Epilobium cleistogamum, monkeyflower (Mimulus), Penstemon, California melic (Melica californica), and deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens).

Tulare County Area Transit (TCaT) provides an intracounty bus service linking the population centers.

Greyhound Lines provides long-distance, intercity bus service outside the county.

V-LINE buses operate daily service between the Visalia Transit Center and the Fresno Airport.

The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense, as of 2019.

The United States Office of Management and Budget has designated Tulare County as the Visalia-Porterville, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

[41] The dairy industry, with sales of milk products, brings in the most revenue for the county, typically more than US$1 billion a year annually.

Oranges, grapes, and cattle-related commodities also earn hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

In 2001, Tulare became the most productive county in the U.S. in terms of agricultural revenues, at US$3.5 billion annually.

TV and Internet service is provided by several companies, such as Spectrum, DISH, DirecTV and HughesNET.