Bethel Island, California

Bethel Island is a census-designated place on Bethel Island in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The population was 2,137 at the 2010 census. The community of Bethel Island is governed as a Special Act District created by the California State legislature and named the Bethel Island Municipal Improvement District . It is a popular destination for recreation seeker, especially hunter, fishermen and boaters.HistoryThe landform known as Bethel Island was created in 1860, when a man named Stone reclaimed a tract of the southern shore of the California Delta. The reclaimed land was thereafter called "Stone Tract." Stone Tract contained an estimated area of 6000acres, and did not become an island until more than 30 years later, when Dutch Slough was dredged eastward to join with Sandmound Slough.The first post office opened in 1898, and named for its first postmaster Franklin Cloud Bethell. The second "L" was dropped by a rather pious postal commissioner that reportedly felt it would be ungodly to allow the new location to be called "Bet Hell", and took liberties to change it to "Bethel" (בית אל), meaning "House of God" in Hebrew. The post office closed in 1902. A Post Office re-opened on Bethel Island in 1947.Though it was common for the era to name the post office after the post master, and for the communities to assume the name of the post office, there are some references to the area as "Bethell" referring to the Sand Mound Ranch farm established by a coalition led by Franklin's older brother, Warren King Bethell, Nicholas Harris (Sheriff of San Jose) and James C. Smith. Prior "owners" of these lands were considered "land speculators" and only performed the minimum amount of improvements to reclaim the land in order to secure land patents. This may not be a fair assessment of all, since some did make an honest attempt to reclaim the lands only to be forced out by changes in governmental policy and financial constraints.