Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa is a city in northern California, United States, and the county seat of Sonoma County. It lies in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area and had a population of 178,127 at the 2020 census. Its name honors Saint Rose of Lima, given by Mexican colonists when the settlement was founded in 1833. The first known permanent European homestead here belonged to the Carrillo family, and in the mid-1850s local leaders laid out a grid of streets around a public square, now called Old Courthouse Square, a pattern that downtown still follows. The county recognized Santa Rosa as an incorporated city in 1867 and the state confirmed it in 1868, making it the third incorporated city in Sonoma County after Petaluma and Healdsburg. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake essentially destroyed the downtown, although the city's population did not suffer greatly.