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is a rural town in Kern County, California, United States. Maricopa is located south-southeast of Taft, at an elevation of 883 feet (269 m). The population was 1,111 at the 2000 census. Maricopa lies at the junction of Route 166 and Route 33. The Carrizo Plain is northwest of the town, and the enormous Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the third largest oil field in the United States, is adjacent to the town on the north and east.
With only one Shell gasoline station, Subway, Maricopa Inn, and a preschool-through-12th grade school, Maricopa is a fairly small town in the southwest San Joaquin Valley which retains its rural country flavor.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.5 square miles (3.9 km²), all of it land. Maricopa is in the extreme southwestern corner of the San Joaquin Valley, on the first rise of land into the foothills of the Coast Ranges, with the Temblor Mountains, following the San Andreas Fault, trending northwest of town, and the San Emigdio Mountains to the southeast. The climate of the area is hot and semi-arid, with summertime temperatures routinely exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Freezes occur in the winter, with the mean period without freezes being about 275 days. About six inches of rain falls annually in Maricopa.