SonomaValley.com provides visitor and hotel information for Sonoma, California
Title
Sonoma Valley California Wine Country
Description
Cradled between the Mayacamas and Sonoma mountain ranges, the Sonoma Valley is the birthplace of California’s famed wine industry and the closest wine region to San Francisco, just 45 minutes north. It encompasses 17 miles of unparalleled beauty, including 13,000 acres of parkland. The eight-acre Sonoma Plaza is the largest town square of its kind in California and a National Historic Landmark, rimmed by carefully preserved adobe buildings. Up the road in Glen Ellen, author Jack London lived and wrote at his beloved Beauty Ranch, now an 800-acre state historic park.
“On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool, delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth, spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.”
Legend has it that the names Sonoma and “Valley of the Moon” are derived from an indigenous word for “many moons.” Today this notion is considered romantic. It is true, however, that indigenous people lived here for 12,000 years before the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans arrived; and the name Sonoma may actually be derived, more prosaically, from “noma,” a Mayakmah word for town.
Languages
English
