Rohnert Park, CA news and local guide

The city is named for the Rohnert family. In 1929 Waldo Emerson Rohnert, a businessman from Detroit, bought a large ranch in the area and built a rough drainage system to reduce flooding in its fields, but he died soon after, in 1933. His son, Fred Rohnert, a Stanford Law School graduate, took over and developed the Rohnert Seed Farm, which became a major horticultural success for the county. In 1956 only four adults lived within the district's boundaries. With the U.S. 101 freeway newly completed at the Cotati bypass, Rohnert Park was laid out and built as a planned city beginning in 1956 and 1957, and in a summer election in 1962 it incorporated with 1,325 acres and about 2,775 people, the first new town incorporated in Sonoma County since 1905. Sources Wikipedia: Rohnert Park, California