The first administrative county of Beichuan was set up in 564
A.D. during the
Northern Zhou dynasty. In 1988,
China granted Beichuan county the status of Qiang autonomy. Although this claim is probably more commercial than historical, Beichuan was part of
West Qiang () that some ancient records accredited as Yu's birthplace, just like the other three locations in Sichuan, namely
Wenchuan,
Dujiangyan, and
Shifang, that raised similar claims. Many places in other parts of China have made similar claims.
Great Sichuan Earthquake Also like the other three counties and towns in Sichuan holding claims to be the birthplace of Yu the Great, Beichuan is among the most severely hit of all disaster regions following the
2008 Sichuan earthquake, including the
Beichuan High School campus, where more than 1,000 students lost their lives after two main buildings collapsed. Beichuan's
Party and government building also collapsed, and Yang Zesen, Beichuan's vice mayor then was among the victims. 80% of the county's buildings are said to have collapsed. The county town, which prior to the earthquake had a population of 20,000, is to be made into a
memorial park, as the site has been deemed too vulnerable. The survivors of the quake have been relocated. The earthquake also caused a landslide on
Mount Tangjia which
dammed the
Jian River and created the
Tangjiashan Quake Lake. The lake was once in danger of causing the Tangjiashan Dam to collapse and catastrophically flood downstream communities, totalling over a million persons. On June 10, 2008, the lake spilled through an artificially constructed sluice channel and flooded the evacuated town. No casualties were caused. Beichuan was at the center of one of two zones where
seismic intensity were the highest at XI
liedu during this earthquake and its aftershocks. Since the earthquake, the central government has increased fortification intensity for seismic design for the old county town from VI to VIII. ==Administrative divisions==