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Santa Rosa is a city of about 151,000 (and growing fast) located about 50 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County...

SANTA ROSA, CA

Dave
2004-02-22 12:47:10

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Santa Rosa is a city of about 151,000 (and growing fast) located about 50 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, just off of Highway 101. Santa Rosa has seen tremendous population growth in the last few years. The drought of the late 80's and early 90's probably helped to bring more people to Sonoma County. Sonoma County during the drought years always had more water then some of the other counties to the south, especially in the Bay Area.

Santa Rosa is the hub of the wine county. It is centrally located for travel to either the Sonoma Valley, Alexander Valley, or the world famous Napa Valley. All of those three wine producing areas are located within 30 to 40 minutes of Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is located about 50 minutes away from from the Pacific Ocean.

The Sonoma County Airport was recently renamed the Charles M. Schulz Airport (named for the creator of the Peanuts worldwide syndicated cartoon strip). This airport is located just north of town and used to have connector flights to the major cities in the Bay Area and even other cities on the US west coast.

There are noticeable differences from one part of Santa Rosa to the next. For example Santa Rosa Avenue used to be the main road through town and the site of most of the cities hotels and site of the original "Auto Row". Santa Rosa Avenue is a very wide Boulevard that runs from Rohnert Park to downtown Santa Rosa.

When the Highway 101 swath was put in - in the 50's it removed much of the traffic off of Santa Rosa Avenue but most of the hotels remained in business until recently. Now, unfortunately most of the hotels, bars, industrial complexes and used car lots are gone. The El Rancho Tropicana, one of Santa Rosa's largest hotels was torn down several years ago, and is now the home to a huge urban sprawl type shopping complex. The Oakland Raiders used to practice on the football fields behind the ...