Bennett Valley is a northwest- to southeast-trending
US, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) wide in its northwestern portion, where the southeast extremity of Santa Rosa, California is located.[1] The axis of the valley floor slopes 40 feet (12 m) per mile (a gradient of 0.008 or 7.6 m per km) from the pinched central portion of the valley, where knolls divide the northwestern from the southeastern segment of the valley.[2] Bennett Valley is drained by Matanzas Creek which is incised into the valley floor; an unnamed stream and Spring Creek drain into Matanzas Creek from the east side of Bennett Valley below the Matanzas Creek Reservoir. A flood-control reservoir on Matanzas Creek in the central portion of the valley collects water from the drainage of the upper portion of the valley. Precipitation in the valley varies from approximately 35 to 40 inches (90 to 100 cm) per year. The latter amount falls on Taylor Mountain, located immediately above Bennett Valley, in an outlier spur of the Sonoma Mountains sometimes called the Los Gullicos Range. Rainfall occurs primarily during winters (November to April), separated by warm dry summers. Bennett Valley is accessed chiefly via Bennett Valley Road, which traverses the valley floor to connect southeast Santa Rosa with Warm Springs Road in Glen Ellen
The dominant surface soil category of Bennett Valley is Clear Lake clay, a soil type occurring here on slopes ranging from zero to two percent gradient.
alluvial fans; it has a neutral pH and occurs at minimum depths of about two meters. Due to the economic demand for wine grapes in this region, pressure began in the 1980s to develop some of the Bennett Valley soils for viticulture
.
Luxury residential and vineyard growth
Economic factors of land scarcity for
upscale residential development[4] and for premium wine grape cultivation led to an explosion of land values in Bennett Valley starting in the 1980s. This trend is shaped by policies of the County of Sonoma, which discourage small lot residential development in Bennett Valley.[5] These effects have led to a decrease in available natural habitat as well as decreased area available for hay farming and pasture usage. Some of the grapes are used locally for wine production such as in the case of the Matanzas Creek Winery, while some are sold to production facilities elsewhere in Sonoma County. As a result of this recognition of the Bennett Valley viticulture as a premium wine-grape region, an American Viticultural Area named Bennett Valley AVA was proposed and established in 2003.[6]
Residential development has emphasized new construction of custom homes typically built on parcels ranging from five to 40 acres (160,000 m2). Most of these homes are of the size range greater than 3,500 square feet (330 m2) and characteristic values of these newer homes as of 2007 are in the range of $1.5 to 3.0 million. Most of the Bennett Valley housing stock is nevertheless of more modest pre-1980 characteristics.
Quadrangle Map, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC (1958)
^ abC.Michael Hogan, John Torrey, Brian McElroy et al., Environmental Impact Report, Southeast Santa Rosa Annexation 2-88, Earth Metrics Inc., Report 7941, California State Clearinghouse, Sacramento, Ca., March 1990
Soil Conservation Service
, Government Printing Office, Washington DC, May 1972
