Santa Rosa, California
City
Clockwise: Sonoma County Museum; St. Francis Winery; Santa Rosa High School; Railroad Square District; Empire Building
Flag
Location of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California and of Sonoma County in California
Santa Rosa, California Location of Santa Rosa in the United States
Coordinates: 38°26′55″N 122°42′17″W / 38.44861°N 122.70472°W / 38.44861; -122.70472[1]
Country	United States
State	California
County	Sonoma
Incorporated	March 26, 1868[2]
Government
• Type	Council-Manager
• Mayor	Natalie Rogers[3]
• City manager	Maraskehia Smith[4]
Area [5]
• City	42.70 sq mi (110.58 km2)
• Land	42.52 sq mi (110.13 km2)
• Water	0.17 sq mi (0.45 km2)  0.49%
Elevation [6]	164 ft (50 m)
Population  (2020)[8]
• City	178,127
• Rank	1st in Sonoma County 25th in California 145th in the United States
• Density	4,200/sq mi (1,600/km2)
• Urban	297,329 (US: 136th)[7]
• Urban density	3,745.1/sq mi (1,446.0/km2)
• Metro	488,863 (US: 116th)
Time zone	UTC−8 (Pacific)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−7 (PDT)
ZIP Codes	95401–95407, 95409[9]
Area code	707
FIPS code	06-70098
GNIS feature IDs	249105, 1659601
Website	www.srcity.org

Santa Rosa (Spanish for "Saint Rose") is a city in and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California.^[10] Its population as of the 2020 census was 178,127.^[8] It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and Redwood Coast. It is the fifth most populous city in the Bay Area after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont; and the 25th-most populous city in California.

History

Early history

Before the arrival of Europeans, what became known as the Santa Rosa Plain was home to a strong and populous tribe of Pomo people known as the Bitakomtara. The Bitakomtara controlled the area closely, barring passage to others until permission was arranged. Those who entered without permission were subject to harsh penalties. The tribe gathered at ceremonial times on Santa Rosa Creek near present-day Spring Lake Regional Park.

Following the arrival of Europeans, initially Spanish explorers and colonists, the Pomos were decimated by violence, land theft, slavery, genocide and smallpox brought from Europe. Social displacement and disruption followed.

19th century

Santa Rosa was founded in 1833 and named by Mexican colonists after Saint Rose of Lima. The first known permanent European settlement here was the homestead of the Carrillo family of California, in-laws to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who settled the Sonoma pueblo and Petaluma area. In the 1830s, during the Mexican period, the family of María López de Carrillo built an adobe house on their Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa land grant, just east of what later became downtown Santa Rosa. By the 1820s, before the Carrillos built their adobe in the 1830s, Spanish and Mexican settlers from nearby Sonoma and other settlements to the south were known to raise livestock in the area.

They slaughtered animals at the fork of the Santa Rosa Creek and Matanzas Creek, near the intersection of modern-day Santa Rosa and Sonoma avenues. This is thought to have been the origin of the name of Matanzas Creek; because it was a slaughtering place, the confluence came to be called La Matanza.

By the 1850s, after the United States annexed California following its victory in the Mexican-American War, a Wells Fargo post and general store were established in what is now downtown Santa Rosa. In the mid-1850s, several prominent locals, including Julio Carrillo, son of Maria Carrillo, laid out the grid street pattern for Santa Rosa with a public square in the center. This pattern has been largely maintained in downtown to this day, despite changes to the central square, now called Old Courthouse Square.

In 1867, the county recognized Santa Rosa as an incorporated city; in 1868, the state officially confirmed the incorporation, making it the third incorporated city in Sonoma County after Petaluma, incorporated in 1858, and Healdsburg, incorporated in 1867.

United States Census Bureau records show that after California became a state, Santa Rosa grew steadily, though it lagged behind nearby Petaluma in the 1850s and early 1860s. In the 1870 census, Santa Rosa was the eighth-largest city in California, and county seat of one of the most populous counties in the state. Growth and development after that was steady but never rapid. The city continued to grow when other early population centers declined or stagnated, but by 1900 it was being overtaken by many other newer population centers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.

20th century

By 1900, the Pomo population had decreased by 95%.^[11]

According to a 1905 article in the Press Democrat reporting on the "Battle of the Trains", the city had just over 10,000 people at the time.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake essentially destroyed the entire downtown, but the city's population did not greatly suffer. However, after that period the population growth of Santa Rosa, as with most of the area, was very slow.

Santa Rosa grew following World War II because it was the location for Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Santa Rosa, the remnants of which are now located in southwest Santa Rosa. The city was a convenient location for San Francisco travelers bound for the Russian River.

The population increased by two-thirds between 1950 and 1970, an average of 1,000 new residents a year over the 20-year period. Some of the increase was from immigration, and some from annexation of portions of the surrounding area.

In 1958, the United States Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization designated Santa Rosa as one of its eight regional headquarters, with jurisdiction over Region 7, which included American Samoa, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah. Santa Rosa continued as a major center for civil defense activity (under the Office of Emergency Planning and the Office of Emergency Preparedness) until 1979 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in its place, ending the civil defense's 69-year history.^[12]

When the City Council adopted the city's first modern General Plan in 1991, the population was about 113,000. In the 21 years following 1970, Santa Rosa grew by about 3,000 residents a year—triple the average growth during the previous twenty years.

Santa Rosa 2010, the 1991 General Plan, called for a population of 175,000 in 2010. The Council expanded the city's urban boundary to include all the land then planned for future annexation, and declared it would be Santa Rosa's "ultimate" boundary. The rapid growth that was being criticized as urban sprawl became routine infill development.

At the first five-year update of the plan, in 1996, the Council extended the planning period by ten years, renaming it Vision 2020 (updated to Santa Rosa 2020, and then again to Santa Rosa 2030 Vision), and added more land and population.

Santa Rosa annexed the community of Roseland in November 2017.^[13]

2017 firestorm

Beginning on the night of October 8, 2017, five percent of the city's homes were destroyed in the Tubbs Fire, a 45,000-acre wildfire that claimed the lives of at least 19 people in Sonoma County.^[14] Named after its origin near Tubbs Lane and Highway 128 in adjacent Napa County, the fire became a major section of the most destructive and third deadliest firestorm in California history.^[15][16][17] Most homes in the Coffey Park, Larkfield-Wikiup, and Fountain Grove neighborhoods were destroyed.

A notable exception to the destruction in the area was the protection of more than 1,000 animals at the renowned Safari West Wildlife Preserve northeast of Santa Rosa. All of the preserve's animals were saved by owner Peter Lang. At age 76, he single-handedly and successfully fought back the flames for more than 10 hours using garden hoses.^[18][19]

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 41.50 sq mi (107.5 km²). Of that area, 41.29 sq mi (106.9 km²) is land and 0.205 sq mi (0.5 km²), comprising 0.49%, is water.^[20]

The city is part of the North Bay region, which includes such cities as Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Windsor, and smaller cities as Sonoma, Healdsburg, Sebastopol. It lies along the US Route 101 corridor, approximately 55 miles (89 km) north of San Francisco, via the Golden Gate Bridge.

Santa Rosa lies on the Santa Rosa Plain. The city's eastern extremities stretch into the Valley of the Moon, and the Sonoma Creek watershed known as the Sonoma Valley. The city's western edge lies in the Laguna de Santa Rosa catchment basin.

The city is in the watershed of Santa Rosa Creek, which rises on Hood Mountain and discharges to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Tributary basins to Santa Rosa Creek lying significantly in the city are Brush Creek, Matanzas Creek, and Piner Creek. Other water bodies within the city include Fountaingrove Lake, Lake Ralphine, and Santa Rosa Creek Reservoir.

The prominent visual features east of the city include Bennett Peak, Mount Hood, and Sonoma and Taylor mountains.^[21]

Climate

Santa Rosa has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) with cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. In the summer, fog and low overcast often move in from the Pacific Ocean during the evenings and mornings. They usually clear up to very warm, sunny weather by late morning or noon before returning in the later evening but will occasionally linger all day. Average annual rainfall is 32.20 inches (818 mm), falling on 74 days annually. The wettest “rain year” was from July 1982 to June 1983 with 55.66 inches (1,413.8 mm) and the driest from July 1976 to June 1977 with 13.06 inches (331.7 mm). The most rainfall in one month was 19.42 inches (493.3 mm) in February 1998 and the most rainfall in 24 hours was 5.23 inches (132.8 mm) on December 19, 1981. Measurable snowfall is extremely rare in the lowlands, but light amounts sometimes fall in the nearby mountains.

There are an average of 28.9 afternoons with highs of 90 °F (32.2 °C) or more and an average of 30.2 mornings with lows reaching the freezing mark. The record high was 115 °F (46.1 °C) on September 6, 2022, and the record low was 9 °F (−12.8 °C) on December 25, 1924.^[22]