The Livermore Valley, historically known as the Valle de San José (Valley of San José), is a valley in
Alameda County, California
Alameda County ( ) is a List of counties in California, county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and List ...
, located in the
East Bay
The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Wi ...
region. The city of
Livermore is located in the valley. The valley became known as "Livermore's Valley", and today as the "Livermore Valley" after
Robert Livermore, an early settler and rancher in the region who received together with
José Noriega a
land grant
A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...
composing most of modern Livermore.
[*
]
Livermore Heritage Guild
Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society
/ref>
The groundwater basin underlying the valley is the Livermore Basin, the largest sub-unit of which is the Mocho Subbasin. The Livermore Basin is one of five aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing material, consisting of permeability (Earth sciences), permeable or fractured rock, or of unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Aquifers vary greatly in their characteristics. The s ...
s in the San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...
that supply most of the metropolitan Bay Area population.total dissolved solids
Total dissolved solids (TDS) is a measure of the dissolved solids, dissolved combined content of all inorganic compound, inorganic and organic compound, organic substances present in a liquid in molecule, molecular, ionized, or micro-granular (so ...
by the year 2020 due to an expanding human population leading to higher rates of return water flows to the aquifer containing certain salts.
Geography and geology
The valley is bounded by the Diablo Range
The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay Area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley a ...
on the north, east, and south; and is linked to the west with the Amador Valley.
Watercourses draining the Livermore Valley include Arroyo Mocho, Arroyo Valle, Arroyo Seco, and Arroyo Las Positas.
Geologically, the Livermore Valley is a tectonically formed pull-apart basin
In geology, a basin is a region where subsidence generates accommodation space for the deposition of sediments. A pull-apart basin is a structural basin where two overlapping (en echelon) strike-slip faults or a fault bend create an area of crust ...
, which has been infilled with late Tertiary and Quaternary
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...
alluvial
Alluvium (, ) is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is ...
sediment.
History
Livermore Valley was named after Robert Livermore, an immigrant American rancher in Mexican Alta California
Alta California (, ), also known as Nueva California () among other names, was a province of New Spain formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but was made a separat ...
, who with his business partner José Noriega were keeping livestock in the valley since 1834. Livermore and Jose Noriega received the Mexican land grant for Rancho Las Positas, which encompassed the valley, in 1839 from Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado.
In 1847 Noriega and Livermore purchased Rancho Canada de los Vaqueros adjacent to the north of Rancho Las Positas and Livermore Valley in the Diablo Range.
Livermore's name became well known during the California Gold Rush
The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the U ...
in the late 1840s−early 1850s, for an inn at his adobe ranch house in the valley that served miners and other travelers eastbound on the road from the Bay Area through the Diablo Range's passes to the Mother Lode region in the Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...
.
The valley came to be called by his name, as was Livermore Pass then (present day Altamont Pass
Altamont Pass, formerly Livermore Pass, is a low mountain pass in the Diablo Range of Northern California between Livermore in the Livermore Valley and Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley. The name is actually applied to two distinct but nea ...
), the valley's northern pass that led to Stockton and the gold fields.
See also
* Hagemann Ranch Historic District
* Livermore Valley AVA
Livermore Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in Alameda County, California, centered around the city of Livermore in the Tri-Valley region which is composed of Amador, San Ramon, and Livermore valleys. The valley was named by ...
References
{{Coord, 37, 41, 19, N, 121, 44, 08, W, display=title
Valleys of Alameda County, California
Subregions of the San Francisco Bay Area
Valleys of California