Catheys Valley (formerly, Cathay and Cathey’s Valley) is a census-designated place in Mariposa County, California, United States. It lies in Catheys Valley 22 miles (35 km) northeast of Merced and 8 miles (13 km) southwest of Mariposa, at an height above sea level of 1,325 feet (404 m). As of the 2020 census, Catheys Valley had a population of 829. Catheys Valley was named after Andrew Cathey, a original of North Carolina, who approved in the valley almost 1850. The ZIP Code is 95306. The community is inside area code 209.

Cathey’s Valley was named after Andrew D. Cathey, born in 1804 in Buncombe, North Carolina. He married Mary Deaver in 1828. Andrew was an adventurous teenage man in his in advance life. He settled to depart North Carolina on an exploratory vacation to California once the Rowland-Hammond-Wills families from Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. Their wagons loaded when household goods, they blazed a trail westward, settling in Benton, Arkansas.

When the California Gold Rush began in 1849, many men left their families in search of gold. Andrew, his son Daniel, and son-in-law Benjamin Wills, traveled by river ship from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to New Orleans and subsequently took a ship to the Isthmus of Panama. In Panama, they boarded a boat bound for San Francisco; from there they caught a stage overland to Indian Gulch in Mariposa County.

In 1851, Andrew returned to Arkansas for his family. The Cathey-Wills, Rowland, and Hammond families organized a wagon train to California. Some of the families were those who had come from North Carolina earlier, leaving the Hammonds to start from Collegeville, Arkansas.