About Santa Rosa, CA

The broad valley containing Santa Rosa was a place that was the home to a populous and strong tribe called Bitakomtara of Pomo before the arrival of Europeans. The Bitakomtara tribe managed the valley nearby, barring passage to other valleys until permission was arranged. People who came without their permission, experienced the harsh penalties given by their law. The Bitakomtara huddled at ceremonial times near what we call now Spring Lake Regional Park on Santa Rosa Creek. Prior to Europeans arrival, the Pomos were executed by smallpox which served unintentionally by the destruction efforts of Anglo settlers and from Europe. The Pomo population had decreased by 95% by the mid-1990’s.

The address of the Carrillo family was known as the first Santa Rosa’s European settlement. In laws of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, established in the Petaluna and Sonoma pueblo area. During the Mexican era in the year 1830’s, the Maria Lopez de Carrillo family established an adobe house on their land grant called Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa. The ranch is located just east of what we call now downtown Santa Rosa. As stated, in the mid-1820’s, prior to the establishment of Carrillo’s adobe the 1830’s, several Mexicans and Spanish colonists from the surrounding area of Sonoma and the other settlements in the area and slaughtered animals to the south and raised livestock at Matanzas Creek and at the fork of the Santa Rosa Creek, which were close to the Sonoma Avenue and what is currently known as the Santa Rosa Avenue intersection. The origin of the name of Matanzas Creek is supposedly because of the place used to be as a slaughtering place, and the assembly was called la Matanza.

In the mid-1850’s, a general store and Wells Fargo post developed in the area of downtown Santa Rosa. During the same era, few prominent locals, including Maria Carrillo, Julio Carrillo, laid out the grid street pattern with a public square in the middle of Santa Rosa. This includes a pattern which largely remains as the street pattern for downtown Santa Rosa and today, even with the changes to the central square it is known as the old Courthouse Square in the present.

In 1867, the county allowed Santa Rosa to incorporate as a city. In the year 1868, the United States officially settled the incorporation, making it formally the Sonoma County, which was the third incorporated city after Healdsburg in the year 1867, which was incorporated as well, and Petaluma incorporated in the year 1858.

According to US Census records, after California became a state, Santa Rosa among the others progressed steadily early on, against initially lagging behind closely to Petaluma in early 1860’s and the 1850’s. In the year 1870, according to the US Census, Santa Rosa was California’s eighth largest city and county seat of one of the populous counties in the U.S. Development and growth after that period were regular but never rapid. The land area continuously grows despite the other citizen centers stagnated or declined. However, in 1900 the area was being overtaken by plentiful and newer population centers in Southern California and in the San Francisco Bay Area. During that time, the county’s population was approximately 10,000 people according to the Press Democrat newspaper in the year 1905, which created reports on the Battle of the Trains newspaper.

Plenty of Santa Rosa’s remaining peaceful area is on its urban fringe, because of its population. Yet, Santa Rosa Creek and its tributaries principal wildlife corridors drift right through the heart of the town. Great egrets, great blue herons, black-crowned herons nest and snowy egrets in the trees on West Ninth Street of the median strip along Santa Rosa Creek and downtown. Few deer are usually spotted roving in the neighborhoods.