A Brief History of Santa Rosa, California

The first known permanent European settlement of Santa Rosa was the homestead of the Carrillo family, in-laws to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who settled the Sonoma pueblo and Petaluma area. During the Mexican period, the family of Dona Maria Carrillo built an adobe house on their land grant, the Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa, just east of what later became downtown Santa Rosa.

According to the U.S. Census, in 1870 Santa Rosa was the 8th largest city in California, and county seat of one of the most populous counties in the state. Growth and development after that were steady.

The city continued to grow when other early population centers declined or stagnated, but by 1900 it had been, or was being, overtaken by many other newer population centers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. The city had just over 10,000 people in 1905.

Santa Rosa grew substantially in the 25 years after the end of World War II, in 1945. The population enlarged by 2/3 between 1950 and 1970, an average of 1,000 new residents a year over the 20 years.

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

Today, early in 2007, the population is more than 157,000, and there are about 127,000 more people in the city of Santa Rosa than there were in 1950.