Livermore, California
Livermore is a city in Alameda County, California. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley, giving its name to the Livermore Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisco Bay Area.
Livermore was a railroad town named for Robert Livermore, a local rancher who settled in the area in the 1840s. It is the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for which the chemical element livermorium is named. It is also the California site of Sandia National Laboratories, which is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its south side is home to local vineyards, and its downtown district is being redeveloped as of 2024.
The United States Census Bureau defines an urban area of Tri-Valley-area cities, with Livermore as the principal city: the Livermore–Pleasanton–Dublin, CA urban area had a 2020 population of 240,381, making it the 167th largest in the United States.
History
Pre-contact
The valley and upland areas, where contemporary Livermore is located, was home to Chochenyo speaking peoples. As a group, these people are considered Ohlone Costonoan with distinct cultural affiliation in contrast to and closely bordering the Bay Miwok to the north and the Valley Yokuts to the east. Four tribelets, the Yulien, Ssaoam, Ssouyn, and the Pelnen occupied the valley floor with territory extending into the hills. Semi-permanent villages were located near water drainages at the valley floor within the current urban limits of Livermore with seasonal camps in the surrounding uplands.1700s
A Spanish expedition led by Pedro Fages skirted the western edge of Livermore Valley in 1772. Shortly afterwards, the Spanish Mission of San Jose was founded in 1797 on the slopes of what is modern day Fremont. Mission San Jose viewed the people and land stretching to the east as under their control. Livermore Valley was called the Valley of San Jose by the Friars and actively recruited native peoples of the valley into the mission system. In contrast, the valley was also used as a staging area for raids on Mission San Jose by neighboring tribes in this early period and beyond.1800s
During the first seven years of the 1800s, five hundred and two individuals were baptized at Mission San Jose from the four tribelets in the Livermore Valley. In this time, Spanish military conducted raids throughout the East Bay using the valley as a natural corridor for movement. Deaths from measles outbreaks were recorded in Mission San Jose in 1806 which forced recruiting beyond the Livermore Valley and into the Altamont range. The Livermore-Amador Valley from 1800 to about 1837 was primarily used as grazing land for the Mission San Jose's growing herds of cattle, sheep and horses. The valley helped San Jose Mission emerge as one of the more wealthy Spanish enclaves. As a result of the secularization of the mission system, in 1839, two large ranchos were created that encompassed the Livermore Valley; Rancho Las Positas and Rancho Valle de San Jose. Many Native groups left the San Jose Mission during this period and reestablished themselves in communities in the East Bay, including the Livermore Valley. Because indigenous food resources there were depleted, they tried to support themselves by working as laborers. But as the population grew thanks to the Gold Rush which started in 1848 and the workers on the railroad, it became more and more difficult to find work; by 1906, there were only 28 individuals left, and by 1914 most of the remaining population was gone.Rancho Las Positas
Robert Livermore, the namesake of the town, was a British citizen who had jumped from a British merchant sailing ship stopping in Monterey, California. In 1839, the Rancho Las Positas grant, which includes most of Livermore, was made to ranchers Robert Livermore and Jose Noriega.In the early 1840s Livermore moved his family from the Sunol Valley to the Rancho Las Positas grant, as the second non-native family to settle in the Livermore valley area. In 1847, after the Americans took control of California and gold was discovered in 1848, Livermore started making money by selling California longhorn cattle to the thousands of hungry California Gold Rush miners who soon arrived. The non-Indian population skyrocketed, and cattle were suddenly worth much more than the $1.00-$3.00 their hides could bring. Livermore's ranch became a popular "first day" stopping point for prospectors and businessmen leaving San Francisco or San Jose and headed for Sacramento and the Mother Lode gold country. Most horse traffic went by way of Altamont Pass just east of Livermore. Because Livermore would offer food and shelter to those passing by, the valley eventually became known as "Livermore's Valley", and is still known as the Livermore Valley today.
Founding
Robert Livermore died in 1858. The first significant settlement in the valley was Laddsville, a small settlement of about 75 which had grown up around the hotel established by Alponso Ladd around 1864 on 160 acres of land he bought. After the hotel and a house were initially built, another home, a blacksmith, a saloon, and a general store followed in the same year. The first schoolhouse was built in 1866.Livermore's founder, William Mendenhall, was another landowner in the Livermore Valley, having bought 650 acres of the Santa Rita grant and 608 acres of the Rancho Valle de San José. In 1869, he set aside of his land for a townsite, creating a new town which he named Livermore, after his friend Robert Livermore. Livermore was platted and registered on November 4, 1869, as a railroad town. By that time, the valley had already become known as Livermore's Valley. He had first met Livermore while marching through the valley with John C. Fremont's California Battalion in 1846 as they were recruited to occupy the surrendering Californio towns captured by the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron. He also donated of this land to the Western Pacific Railroad, which in September 1869 placed a station on the land William Mendenhall had donated. The land for the tracks had already been signed over by Robert Livermore from his ranch in 1855, as surveyors had determined it was the best place to build. The original railroad tracks went from Alameda Terminal to Sacramento over the nearby Altamont Pass in the east and Niles Canyon on the west.
After it was destroyed by a fire in 1871, Laddsville gradually merged into Livermore. The railroad significantly accelerated Livermore's growth, and the incorporation of Laddsville into the city added impetus; the city was officially incorporated by the state on April 1, 1876. At the time the town had a population of about 830 people in 234 buildings. It had 13 saloons.
Early Livermore
In the early days, the income of the town of Livermore mainly came from wheat. The city also developed as a place for the shipping and processing of products of the valley, including cattle, roses, and white wines, the last especially prominent after the 1880s. Some other contributors to the town's prosperity were coal and oil deposits in the surrounding hills.Coal was first found in Harrisville, and in 1875 the Livermore Coal Company was formed. Extensive deposits of coal were also mined in the nearby Corral Hollow, which was briefly the largest coal producer in California between 1895 and 1905. The ghost towns of Tesla and Carnegie were satellite towns of Livermore at the time.
Livermore's wine industry grew after the 1880s, and it became notable for wineries like Wente Vineyards, Concannon Vineyards, and Cresta Blanca Winery. Since it has a Mediterranean climate, gravelly soil, warm days and cool nights, it was a good location to grow wine grapes. By 1880 the wheat and barley fields were being replaced by vineyards. As well as the main products of the town, extensive chromite deposits were found nearby and exploited for a time. Magnesite deposits were exploited on Red Mountain, near the end of Mines Road. The Remillard Brick Company was also in Livermore in 1885, and was producing an extensive line of bricks and employing over 100 men.
Private grade schools were operating in Livermore from the 1860s on. The Livermore Collegiate Institute was founded in 1870, and Union High School graduated its first class of students in 1896. There was an old bullfight ring that survived until at least 1870. By 1876 the town had grown and a fire company, churches, a bank, and a library were built. Livermore was officially incorporated by the state as a city in April 1876.
During Livermore's early years, before and after it was incorporated, it was well known for large hotels that graced the downtown street corners, before new buildings replaced them. A telephone line connected Livermore to Arroyo Valley by 1886, and electric lights were introduced by 1888. By 1890 Livermore had over of streets. Livermore originally had a Boot Hill called the Oak Knoll Cemetery, Livermore's first public cemetery, but it was formally abandoned after becoming less popular and being devastated by natural disasters in the 1900s, and is now used for athletics at Granada High School.
1900s
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Livermore Valley attracted the creation of sanitariums due to the warm climate and clean air. From 1894 to 1960, the Livermore Sanitarium was in operation for the treatment of alcoholism and mental disorders; and from 1918 to around 1960, the Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium was in operation in the town for the treatment of tuberculosis. The city once had a slogan "Live Longer with Livermore".In 1909, the Livermore Carnegie Library and Park opened, taking advantage of a Carnegie library grant. As the city grew and larger libraries were needed, other libraries were built, and the original site was converted into a historic center and park.
The community was primarily agricultural until 1945, and transitioned to a suburb as a result of construction of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1952 and the Sandia National Laboratories in 1956, and population overflow from the rest of the bay area.
In 1942, the U.S. government bought of ranch land, and built the Livermore Naval Air Station. The primary mission of the base was to train Navy pilots for World War II. This facility operated until it was decommissioned in 1946 after the end of the war. On January 5, 1951, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, U.S. Navy, formally transferred the former NAS Livermore in its entirety to the Atomic Energy Commission for use by the University of California's Radiation Laboratory. In 1952, the government established Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, named after physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, as the site of a second laboratory for the study of nuclear energy like the research being done at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The laboratory was run by the University of California. Edward Teller was a co-founder of LLNL and was both its director and associate director for many years. In 1956, the California campus of Sandia National Laboratories opened across East Avenue from LLNL. Both LLNL and Sandia are technically on U.S. government property just outside the city's jurisdiction limits, but with employment at LLNL at about 6,800 and Sandia/California at about 1,150 they are Livermore's largest employers.
A number of historic buildings from the 1800s were razed in the 1960s to build fast food and other modern structures in their place.
The town grew rapidly in population in the 1990s when many people in Bay Area moved farther away from the urban core.