Hanford is the county seat of Kings County, California, set in the southern San Joaquin Valley roughly halfway between Fresno and Visalia. The city grew up around a Southern Pacific Railroad stop in the late nineteenth century and incorporated in 1891, and its layout and architecture still reflect that rail-era founding. As the commercial and governmental hub of Kings County, Hanford anchors a region long tied to agriculture — dairies, cotton, and row crops — while also serving the workforce of the nearby Lemoore Naval Air Station and the Adventist Health hospital system, both major regional employers. The city's center is its historic downtown, built around Courthouse Square and the 1896 Kings County courthouse, with the 1898 Romanesque former county jail known as the Bastille a short walk away. A few blocks from the square, China Alley preserves the legacy of the Chinese immigrants who arrived in the late nineteenth century to work the railroads and farms; the alley's Taoist Temple is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1905 Carnegie library, now the Hanford Carnegie Museum, adds to the cluster of civic landmarks. Residential life ranges from early-twentieth-century houses near the downtown core to mid-century ranch homes and newer single-family subdivisions along corridors such as 12th Avenue. The city's schools are divided between the Hanford Elementary School District and the Hanford Joint Union High School District, and Hanford sits within commuting distance of the larger Fresno and Visalia metros along Highways 198 and 43. For residents, the city offers a small-city pace with an unusually intact historic core, set within easy reach of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to the east.