May 24, 2001 Salida, Ca - The U.S. Census Bureau has slowly been releasing bits of data from the 2000 population survey. Not all of the   data is available, but total population and some race demographics are now online. Upon researching the population results for the Stanislaus County area, it was rather astonishing to see some of the figures. Especially when comparing them to the 1990 Census data.

The most surprising revelation is the increase in population in the largest un-incorporated area of the county, Salida. Recent estimates of the population for Salida have wavered around 12 to 13 thousand people. Not a bad guess, but the actual total will surprise you. Salida is now well over 18 thousand people strong, out populating Oakdale, Riverbank and Patterson respectively. Salida is the 4th most populous community in Stanislaus. Modesto of course holds the top spot at number 1 with 188,856; Turlock comes in second with 55,810; Ceres is 3rd with 34,609 and Salida ranks 4th, with 18,070.

To put the Salida growth spurt into perspective, consider this. In 1990, when the last census was taken, Salida registered 4,499 total persons. In the past 10 years, Salida's population has increased over 300%. An increase of 13,571 people over the past decade has made Salida's population skyrocket. Overall, Stanislaus County saw a 20.6% increase in population with the State of California seeing a 13.8% increase. Other areas of the county also saw exponential growth since the previous census. Newman increased it's population by 119% going from 4,151 in 1990 to 9,095 in 2000. Riverbank was another city that saw a hefty increase in population swelling from 8,547 in '90 to 15,826 showing a 85% increase. Most every area of the county saw an increase of 14 percent or better with one exception. According to the available data, Denair, an unincorporated area just outside of Turlock showed a decrease in population by 6.6%.

Modesto grew by 14.6% with a total population of 188,856 for 2000. Turlock is at 55,810 increasing 32%, Waterford increased by 45% to 6,924, Patterson is growing strong with a 34.5% increase with the population up to 11,606 and Oakdale saw a 29.6% increase with 15,503.

The current population for the United States according to the 2000 Census is 281,421,906. California leads the list of most populated states, with 33,871,648. It ranked the most populous state in 1990 as well. Coming in second for most populated state is Texas with 20,851,820, third is New York with 18,976,457, coming in 4th is Florida with 15,982,378, and rounding out the top 5 is Illinois with 12,419,293.

Some interesting notables while researching the census data shows that Nevada holds the top position for percent increase in population. Nevada's population increased by 66.3%. North Dakota saw the smallest increase in population only gaining a .5% increase. The most interesting is Washington D.C. which saw a decrease of 5.7% in it's population, the only U.S. state/territory to show a negative increase in population.

Raw Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov
Compiled by: Salida.org http://www.salida.org