The North Bay is a subregion of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

, in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The largest city is

Santa Rosa Santa Rosa is the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish name for Saint Rose. Santa Rosa may also refer to: Places Argentina * Santa Rosa, Mendoza, a city * Santa Rosa, Tinogasta, Catamarca * Santa Rosa, Valle Viejo, Catamarca *Santa Rosa, La Pampa * S ...

, which is the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. It is the location of the Napa and Sonoma wine regions, and is the least populous and least urbanized part of the Bay Area. It consists of Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

Transportation

The North Bay is connected to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

by the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...

and to the East Bay by the

Richmond–San Rafael Bridge The Richmond–San Rafael Bridge (also officially named the John F. McCarthy Memorial Bridge) is the northernmost of the east–west crossings of the San Francisco Bay in California, USA. Officially named after California State Senator John F ...

Carquinez Bridge The Carquinez Bridge is a pair of parallel bridges spanning the Carquinez Strait at the northeastern end of San Francisco Bay. They form the part of Interstate 80 between Crockett and Vallejo, California. The name Carquinez Bridge originally ...

and the Benicia–Martinez Bridge. Several

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water ta ...

routes operate between the North Bay and San Francisco, from terminals located in Angel Island, Larkspur, Sausalito, Tiburon and Vallejo. The Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit
SMART
, a

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are con ...

line from Larkspur to Cloverdale, was approved by voters in November 2008. Passenger service began between the Sonoma County Airport station and San Rafael in August 2017 and was completed as far south as Larkspur in 2019.

History

The area was the home of

Pomo The Pomo are an Indigenous people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small ...

Native Americans before European intervention. The Russians first settled the area at Fort Ross as a fur-trading post, but the area was later settled by the Spanish-Mexican

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New 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 ...

. The

Bear Flag Revolt The California Republic ( es, La República de California), or Bear Flag Republic, was an unrecognized breakaway state from Mexico, that for 25 days in 1846 militarily controlled an area north of San Francisco, in and around what is now S ...

took place in the town of Sonoma, which is also the location of the last of the

California Missions The Spanish missions in California ( es, Misiones españolas en California) comprise a List of Spanish missions in California, series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 in what is now the U.S. state of Cal ...

. General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the last secretary to the Governor of California before its annexation to the United States, kept his home in Sonoma; his ranch, now a National Historic Landmark, was in nearby Petaluma. The North Bay remained isolated and rural well into the 20th Century. The opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s transformed Marin County from a dairy farming region into an upscale

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separ ...

an area. Until the 1990s, the region's growth was at a gradual pace, with significant restrictions on development being imposed in Marin and Napa Counties in the 1970s (future Senator

Barbara Boxer Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S ...

was an important figure in the North Bay's open space preservation movement).

Major cities

The largest city in the North Bay is

, with a population of 175,000. Other major cities include: (sorted by population) * Vallejo 121,000 * Fairfield 116,000 *

Vacaville Vacaville is a city located in Solano County in Northern California. Sitting approximately from Sacramento and from San Francisco, it is within the Sacramento Valley. As of the 2020 census, Vacaville had a population of 102,386, making it th ...

100,000 * Napa 80,000 * Petaluma 60,000 * San Rafael 59,000 * Novato 56,000

References

{{Coord, 38.3, -122.5, region:US-CA_type:landmark_dim:150km, display=title Subregions of the San Francisco Bay Area Regions of California

Transportation

History

Major cities

See also

References