Sonoma's Best Sonoma California

About My City

Sonoma () is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sonoma is one of the principal cities of California's Wine Country and the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA. Sonoma's population was 10,739 as of the 2020 census, while the Sonoma urban area had a population of 32,679. Sonoma is a popular tourist destination, owing to its Californian wineries, noted events like the Sonoma International Film Festival, and its historic center. In 1823, Spaniard José Altimira established Mission San Francisco Solano, under the direction of Governor Luis Antonio Argüello. Following the Mexican secularization of the missions, Californio statesman Mariano G. Vallejo founded Sonoma on the former mission's lands in 1835. Sonoma served as the base of General Vallejo's operations until the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, when American filibusters overthrew the local Mexican government and declared the California Republic, ushering in the American Conquest of California. == History == When the first Spaniards arrived, the area was near the northeast corner of the Native Americans / Aboriginal peoples (Indians) of the Coast Miwok territory, with Southern Pomo to the northwest, Wappo to the northeast, Suisunes and Patwin peoples to the east. === Mission era === Mission San Francisco Solano is the direct predecessor to the founding of the town of Sonoma. The mission, the only to be constructed not by the Spanish but by the later Mexican authorities seeking independence and succeeding to the Royal Spanish Viceroyalty at that time, was built as part of a larger plan Governor Luis Antonio Argüello had devised to fortify the Spanish presence north of the San Francisco Bay and thus deter Russian Empire (Russia) encroachment southward from further north in Russian America (where they'd established a presence back in the 1740s, a half-century before) into the Pacific Ocean coastal region. Franciscan padre / priest José Altimira worked with Governor Argüello to plan the mission, against the desires of José Francisco de Paula Señan, then the President-General of the Spanish missions in California, who disapproved of secular government intervention into religious matters.