Population of State Up 2.2% to 26.4 Million

California’s population has jumped by 570,000, the largest one-year gain since the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, state officials said.

The population was estimated on July 1, 1985, at 26,365,000, almost 8.5 million more than second-ranked New York, said Jesse Huff, state director of finance.

The increase was 2.2% over the total for July 1, 1984. The change was made up of 458,000 births, 204,000 deaths and a net migration gain of 315,000.

The excess of births over deaths of 254,000 is the largest in the state’s history, Huff said. The Finance Department’s Population Research Institute does annual estimates of the state’s population.

Only two of the state’s 58 counties, Modoc and Marin, lost population over the year.

Gold Country Fast-Growing

The counties in the Gold Country along California 49 east of Sacramento had the state’s largest regional growth rate, 4.2%. The San Francisco Bay area had the slowest rate, 1.6%.

Metropolitan counties grew by 2.2%, while non-metropolitan counties grew an average of 3.4%. That continued a trend begun in the 1970s.

The fastest-growing county was San Luis Obispo at 5.3%. Los Angeles County had the largest numerical gain, 120,700.

San Diego County, with a population of 2,131,600, became the state’s second-largest county, overtaking Orange County, 2,127,900. Los Angeles remained the largest at 8,085,300.

Other fast-growing counties are Riverside, 5.1%; Lake, 5.2%; Tuolumne, 5%; El Dorado, 4.9%; Nevada, 4.8%; San Benito, 4.7%; San Bernardino and Amador, 4.5% each, and San Joaquin, 4.4%.