Sonoma Valley
Sonoma Valley is a
Sonoma Valley offers a wide range of year-round festivals and events, including the
Geography
The valley is located in southeastern
History
Once a valley of the coastal
The other communities in the valley, such as
In October 2017, Sonoma Valley was badly affected by the Tubbs Fire.
Origin of the name
The phrase "Valley of the Moon" was first recorded in an 1850 report by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo to the California Legislature.[7]
According to
In the native languages there is also a constantly recurring ending tso-noma, from tso, the earth; and noma, village; hence tsonoma, "earth village".[9] Other sources say Sonoma comes from the Patwin tribes west of the Sacramento River, and their Wintu word for "nose". Per California Place Names, "the name is doubtless derived from a Patwin word for 'nose', which Padre Arroyo (Vocabularies, p. 22) gives as sonom (Suisun)." Spaniards may have found an Indian chief with a prominent protuberance and applied the nickname of Chief Nose to the village and the territory.[10] The name may have applied originally to a nose-shaped geographic feature.[11]
Geology
The Sonoma Valley is part of the Coast Range Physiographic province. Basement rocks that make up the valley at great depth are the Great Valley Sequence shale, sandstone and conglomerate deposited in a continental slope- to abyssal plain environment via turbidite flows. The Cretaceous Great Valley Sequence overlies and contacts the Franciscan Complex along the Coast Range Thrust. The Jurassic-Cretaceous Franciscan Complex includes crumpled, uplifted terranes that have resulted from the subduction of the former oceanic Farallon Plate under the North American continent. During late Miocene-Pliocene time (~10 to ~4 million years) the area was attended by volcanism (Late Miocene Tolay Volcanics and Late Miocene - Pliocene Sonoma Volcanics) which are interbedded with the late Miocene-Pliocene Petaluma Formation. The (~9 to 4 million year old) Petaluma Formation was a fresh-water river system flowing from east to west and through the volcanics.
At that time, volcanic lava flows and river sands and gravels were actively deposited together, hence "interbedded lavas and gravels". The volcanoes may have been similar to island arcs. The Petaluma Formation is found in outcrop from Sears Point to Santa Rosa (through Sonoma Mountain) and as far west as Cotati where it interfingers with a marine sandstone called the Wilson Grove Formation. Gravels in the Petaluma Formation did not come from rocks located in Napa, but have been sourced to mountains east of San Jose, California. This does not mean rivers flowed northward from San Jose to Sonoma; rather, strike-slip movement along the Hayward-Sonoma Valley-Carneros fault system has dislocated present-day Sonoma County north and away from the mountains in San Jose where the basin formed.
The valley is drained by
Hydrogeology
In spring 2006, the United States Geological Survey in conjunction with the
Points of interest
- Quarryhill Botanic Garden, a research botanical gardenhousing one of the largest collections of temperate Asian plants in North America. Quarryhill is open to the public.
- Mission San Francisco Solano was the 21st, last and northernmost mission in Alta California.[12]
- California State Historic Park near Glen Ellen, California, United States, situated on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain.
- Lachryma Montis.
- Sonoma Creek is a 33.4-mile-long (53.8 km)[13] stream in northern California.
- Wine Country is an area of Northern California in the United States known world-wide as a premium wine-growing region.[14]
- Sonoma Plaza, the town square of Sonoma, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Bear FlagParty.
- General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Home: Official residence of the last Spanish governor.
- Presidio of Sonomaadobe
- Toscano Hotel
- Swiss Hotel, Adobe structure and original home of Vallejo's brother, located on 'The Square' (see link below)
- Sebastiani Theatre, a historical theatre built in 1933 by Samuele Sebastiani as a movie house.
- Sonoma TrainTown Railroad, miniature amusement park
- Depot Park
- Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, located on the Plaza next to City Hall.
See also
- Category:Wineries in Sonoma County, California
- Sonoma Valley Film Festival
- Sonoma Raceway
- Valley of the Moon
References
- About.com. Archived from the originalon May 10, 2017. Retrieved September 8, 2013.
- ^ "Sonoma Valley". Fodor's. Retrieved September 8, 2013.
- ^ JSTOR 1495526.
- ^ "1940s Tour of California Missions Junipero Serra Catholic Churches". April 28, 1944 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Bear Flag Revolt". Encyclopedia.com. 2008. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
- ^ "General Vallejo" (Community). City of Sonoma.
- ^ Hanna, Phil Townsend (1951). The dictionary of California land names. The Automobile Club of Southern California, Los Angeles. p. 311.
- ^ May, James (May 19, 2003). "Why Graton is trying to get into gaming". Indian Country - Legend of Valley of the Moon. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007.
- ^ Alfred Louis Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, Dover Publications, New York City, N.Y. (1976)
- Alfred L. Kroeber, AAE 29:354 [1932]
- ISBN 0-520-21316-5.
- ^ Bancroft p. 496
- ^ U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map, accessed March 10, 2011
- ISBN 978-0-679-00918-4.
Kroeber, A. L., Handbook of the Indians of California (New York 1976 - reprint of Bulletin 78 of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution 1925)