Mariposa (; Spanish for “Butterfly”) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in and the county seat of Mariposa County, California, United States. The population was 1,526 at the 2020 census. The community is named after the flocks of monarch butterflies seen overwintering there by in advance explorers.

Mariposa is located at 37°29′06″N 119°57′59″W / 37.48500°N 119.96639°W / 37.48500; -119.96639, at 1,949 feet (594 m) in elevation. It lies in the rugged foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Mariposa Creek flows through the town. Soils in the urban Place are mostly beige to reddish beige loam of the Blasingame series. A gravelly loam is mapped as the Boomer series.^{[citation needed]} These soils withhold thick grassland lead trees such as blue oak, black oak, gray pine, and ponderosa pine. To the west-northwest of town is a large Place of sparse vegetation and rockland on which is found serpentine soil of the Henneke series.

California State Routes 49 and 140 fuming in Mariposa, merging for 0.8 miles (1.3 km) as the town’s main street. Highway 49 leads southeast 27 miles (43 km) to fall at Oakhurst and northwest the thesame distance to Coulterville. Highway 140 leads southwest 36 miles (58 km) to Merced in the San Joaquin Valley and northeast 42 miles (68 km) to Yosemite Valley.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total Place of 4.04 square miles (10.46 km), all but 0.07% of it land. The community lies in the valley of Mariposa Creek, which flows south and next southwest into the San Joaquin Valley.