Colorear cada región
La intensidad del color transporta el valor. La opción correcta para tasas, porcentajes y cifras per cápita, ya ajustadas al tamaño o la población.
Abrir la plantillaTodos los mapas
California County Map Maker
A blank California county map to print, and a builder to fill it with your own data. Download the free outline of all 58 counties, or upload a spreadsheet and publish an interactive California map you can embed anywhere.
Mapa mudo de California, descarga gratuita
Los 58 counties, con un trazado limpio. Imprímelo, coloréalo o insértalo en un documento — sin cuenta y sin atribución.
Libre para cualquier uso, incluidos el comercial y el educativo. Generado a partir de los mismos límites que usa el editor.
Descargar SVGQué muestra un mapa de California
California divides into 58 counties, and nearly everything the state publishes — unemployment, housing costs, water use, test scores, wildfire acreage, election returns — is released at that level. It is also the hardest state in the country to map honestly, because the counties are wildly unequal in both directions. Los Angeles County alone holds around a quarter of the state's people in a middling-sized shape, while San Bernardino County is larger than nine states and holds a fraction as many. Any California map has to decide which of those two imbalances it is going to let the reader see, and a county map is the only unit at which both are visible at once.
Tres formas de dibujar California
Colorea las regiones cuando tu cifra es una tasa; dimensiona un marcador cuando es un recuento. Invertirlo es la forma más común de que un mapa engañe.
Un marcador dimensionado por región
Un símbolo por región, escalado según el valor. Úsalo para recuentos y totales, donde colorear la superficie solo redibujaría el mapa de población.
Abrir la plantillaCírculos proporcionales
Círculos dimensionados por el valor sobre el contorno. Funciona bien cuando unas pocas regiones dominan y las pequeñas se perderían en un color.
Abrir la plantillaCuándo cartografiar California
Your data is reported by California county
CDPH health indicators, EDD labour figures, Department of Education test and enrolment data, Secretary of State election returns and Department of Finance population estimates are all published by county.
You are showing a rate or a share
Unemployment rate, share of renters, uninsured share, share of the vote, median home price. Rates already account for how many people live there, which is what shading a region needs.
You want to show coast against valley
California's real divisions run inland from the ocean, not north to south. A county map puts the Bay Area, the Central Valley, the southern metros and the sparse far north on the same picture, where the difference between them is a thing the reader can see.
You need a blank map to print or fill in
Classroom exercises, sales-territory mark-ups, planning workshops, colour-by-hand worksheets. The free outline above prints cleanly at any size.
Cuándo no cartografiar California
You are mapping totals rather than rates
Shade by a raw count and Los Angeles County wins every time, by a margin that leaves no colour left for anywhere else. Use symbols or bubbles sized by the count instead.
Your unit is a city or a metro
Los Angeles County contains 88 cities, and the Bay Area spreads across nine counties. City figures forced onto county shapes describe a place that does not exist.
The pattern you are showing is finer than a county
Housing costs, air quality and income vary more within Los Angeles County than they do between most pairs of counties. If that is the story, map tracts or ZIP codes, not counties.
Only a few counties have data
A map with forty grey shapes and eighteen coloured ones is a worse bar chart. If coverage is patchy, rank the counties you do have.
Cómo crear un mapa de California
De la hoja de cálculo al mapa publicado, paso a paso.
Download the blank map, or start from the template
The free outline above is a plain SVG of all 58 counties — print it, or drop it into a document. To build with data, open the PlotSet California (counties) template, which comes with sample data already bound.
Prepare a county column and a value column
One row per county: the county name or its five-digit FIPS code in the first column, your number in the second. FIPS codes for California all begin 06.
Upload or connect your data
Import a CSV or Excel file, paste from a spreadsheet, or connect a Google Sheet so the map can be refreshed when the source updates.
Pick the style that fits the measure
Shade the counties for a rate, or switch to symbols or bubbles for a count. Same geography, same data, different encoding.
Choose a colour scale on purpose
Sequential for a low-to-high measure, diverging only when a real midpoint exists — the state average, zero change, a 50 per cent line. Four to six steps read more precisely than a smooth gradient.
Publish, embed or export
Publish for a live interactive map with a tooltip on every county, or export a PNG, SVG or PDF for a report or a deck.
Empieza con la plantilla de California y sus datos de ejemplo, y luego sustitúyelos por los tuyos.
Abrir la plantillaQue tus datos de California encajen
Cómo debe ser la columna de lugares y dónde encontrar datos que ya coincidan.
All 58 counties, spelled as the state spells them
The joins that fail are the three Santas — Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz — and the two-word Spanish names: Del Norte, El Dorado, Contra Costa, San Luis Obispo. Sierra and Siskiyou are different counties, and so are Lake and Lassen.
California FIPS codes start with a leading zero
The state code is 06, so 06001 is Alameda and 06115 is Yuba. Spreadsheets strip that zero on import and turn a valid code into 6001, which joins to nothing. Set the column to text before you paste.
San Francisco is a city and a county
It is the only consolidated city-county in the state, so San Francisco city figures are already county figures. Every other California city is a fraction of its county and cannot be mapped this way.
'Southern California' is not a unit in the data
Nor is the Bay Area, the Central Valley or the Inland Empire. They are groups of counties, and you have to define which counties you mean before you aggregate — different agencies draw them differently.
Where to get California county data
The California Department of Public Health, the Employment Development Department, the Department of Education, the Secretary of State and the Department of Finance all publish county tables, as does the Census Bureau's ACS.
Errores frecuentes en un mapa de California
Shading counts instead of rates
In California this is not merely a population map, it is a Los Angeles map. Anything that grows simply because more people live there should be a sized symbol, not a shade.
Letting the desert counties carry the argument
San Bernardino, Inyo and Kern cover roughly a fifth of the state's area between them and hold a small share of its people. On a shaded map they dominate the picture in proportion to their acreage, which is almost never what the data is about.
Losing the leading zero on FIPS codes
It is the single most common cause of a blank California map, and it fails silently: 6037 is not a county code, so Los Angeles simply does not shade. Store FIPS as text.
Using a linear scale on a skewed measure
Population, housing cost and firm counts in California span several orders of magnitude. A linear colour scale puts 56 counties in the lightest bin. Use quantile breaks or a log scale, and label the legend so the reader knows which.
Using a rainbow colour scale
A sequence of hues has no natural order, so readers cannot tell high from low without checking the legend on every county. Use one hue, light to dark.
Preguntas sobre el mapa de California
Yes. The outline above is a free SVG of all 58 California counties — right-click to save it, print it, or drop it into a worksheet or document. No account needed.
Pon tus datos en el mapa de California
Sube una hoja de cálculo y publica un mapa interactivo en un par de minutos — gratis y sin tarjeta.