WELCOME TO ROHNERT PARK

Rohnert Park is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of San Francisco. It is an early planned city modeled directly after Levittown, New York and Levittown, Pennsylvania. Rohnert Park is the sister city of Hashimoto in Japan.

Originally home of the Coast Miwok native people, the Mexican government granted Rancho Cotate to Captain Juan Castenada in July 1844 for his military services in the region. The grant encompassed present-day Penngrove, Cotati and Rohnert Park. "Cotate Rancho is a part of the Vallejo Township which is the plain between Sonoma Mountain and Petaluma Creek San Pablo Bay, and an east and west line dividing the tract from Santa Rosa Township."

Rancho Cotate was sold in 1849 to Dr. Thomas S. Page, of Cotati, and eventually broken up and sold off piecemeal to incoming settlers. The town of Rohnert Park was named after the Rohnert family who owned the Rohnert Seed Farm. In 1929, a successful businessman, Waldo Emerson Rohnert, (born 1869 - died 1933), a native of Detroit, Michigan, purchased a large ranch here and minimized flooding in the fields with a crude drainage system but died shortly after. His son, Fred Rohnert, a graduate of Stanford Law School took over the ranch and developed a seed growing business, the Rohnert Seed Farm, which turned into a major horticultural success for the county.

In the year 1956, only four adult residents lived within the district boundaries, but in 1957 with the 101 Freeway newly completed at the Cotati bypass, Rohnert Park began to be built and laid out as a planned city. In a summer election of 1962, Rohnert Park was incorporated, comprising 1,325 acres (536 ha), housing an estimated 2,775 persons, the first town in Sonoma County to incorporate since 1905. The historic neighboring town of Cotati, California voted to incorporate the following year.