Sacramento County is a county in California. The county seat is the city of Sacramento, the state capital. The County covers about 994 square miles in the middle of the Central Valley, California's prime agricultural region. Sacramento County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 and named after the Sacramento River, which forms its western border. The county has a total area of 995 miČ, 97% of it is land and 3% of it is water. As of 2000, there were 1,223,499 people, 453,602 households, and 297,562 families residing in the county.