Cotati

By Prudence Draper and Lloyd Draper

The town of Cotati, once the Coast Miwok village of Kot'ati, was by 1850 a 17,000-acre diamond-shaped ranch set in the center of Sonoma County's golden fields. Dr. Thomas Stokes Page and his heirs ran that ranch until the 1890s, when they laid out a town and a distinctive hexagonal plaza with streets named after Dr. Page's sons. That wheel-like plaza earned centrally located Cotati the title, "Hub of Sonoma County." For many years Cotati was the gathering place for hundreds of hardworking chicken ranchers, who bought up small farms in the surrounding countryside, but it was transformed in the 1970s into a hippie haven fed by nearby Sonoma State University. Old chicken houses then became student housing and the Plaza hub that was the setting for traditional community festivals became a vibrating stage for dancing and demonstrations. Cotati's famous downtown nightclub, the Inn of the Beginning, was the proving ground for many now-famous musicians, including John Lee Hooker, Huey Lewis, Vince Guaraldi, Roseanne Cash, and Kate Wolf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Mar 16, 2004
• ISBN: 9781439614211

Prudence Draper

Authors and local historians Lloyd and Prudence Draper, Cotati residents for over half a century, arrived as newlyweds in 1951 when they bought The Cotatian newspaper. In this volume they have gathered images from both private collections and the public archives of Sonoma County libraries and museums to illustrate Cotati's enduring small town charm and the people who have called it home.

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INTRODUCTION

Many of the Coast Miwok Indians who had lived in the Cotate Valley for generations disappeared after the first Spanish settlers arrived. White man’s diseases and forced labor in the missions and forts took their toll.

No English-speaking settlers attempted to make their homes here until 1826, when John Thomas Reed arrived. Born in Ireland in 1805, he came as a teenager to the New World, and in his travels became acquainted with the San Francisco area. After the Mexican War of Independence he sought land in Sausalito, but learned about the Cotati Valley after talking to Jose Antonio Sanchez, an early Spanish settler. Reed traveled to the Sonoma Mission, then over the mountains to the Cotati area, built a cabin, and planted wheat. Before he could harvest his first crop, he was burnt out by Indians, probably as they carried out their annual practice of burning grasslands to harvest small rodents and snakes to augment their diet. Discouraged, Reed went to Marin where he built a successful mill and became a prominent citizen of Mill Valley.

Reed died young, apparently without ever having his photograph taken. But accounts by people who knew him in Marin describe him as a fine specimen of manhood, notably tall and wellproportioned, with deep blue eyes, good complexion, and crisp blonde hair.

As part of the Mexican government’s effort to settle California, the Rancho Cotate land grant was established, occupying a 17,000 acre diamond-shaped area in the center of what became Sonoma County. It was first granted in 1844 to Captain Juan Castenada, who built a house and bought stock, but sold the claim two years later to Thomas O. Larkin. Larkin, the American consul at Monterey, sold it in 1849 to Joseph S. Ruckle, who sold it two months later to Dr. Thomas Page of Valparaiso, Chile.

Dr. Page apparently had been urged by his friend Faxon Atherton to buy land and bring his family to California. Finally, the Rancho Cotate had a permanent owner.

The Page family’s ownership continued until 1944, when the final portions of the huge ranch were sold, the last of the Spanish land grants in Sonoma County to be subdivided. The community that began after 1893, when the Page family laid out the town of Cotate, grew quickly. Most of the new settlers were farmers, following the lead of nearby Petaluma, where raising chickens for eggs was already a thriving industry. The town that grew up served those small farmers, offering them general merchandise, livestock feed, and vegetables, while buying up their eggs.

In 1915 the State of California chose what had been Cotati Boulevard as the main highway between Petaluma and Santa Rosa, and the Cotati scene changed. Autos made the difference, and garages, service stations, and restaurants appeared to serve the motoring public.

When a new route west of downtown Cotati was chosen for the 101 freeway in 1955, Cotati changed again. The poultry business became unprofitable for small family farms, major traffic bypassed downtown Cotati, and a family-oriented community for commuters began to evolve. The town had organized to provide water and sewer service, had streetlights, and the active chamber of commerce was fiercely proud of the little community and its distinctive six-sided plaza, advertising itself as the Hub of Sonoma County.

Further radical changes came to Cotati with the establishment of Sonoma State College in 1960 and the beginning of development in Rohnert Park on what had been the hay fields of the Page Ranch and later the seed farm of the Waldo Rohnert Company. Rohnert Park, masterplanned and built at a fast pace, was an astonishing development for residents of the small farm town. Suddenly the Cotati Volunteer Fire Department had to protect new homes in what had traditionally been farm fields, and the Cotati School District began putting students on double session while building new schools.

When Rohnert Park incorporated as a city, Cotati saw its rural lifestyle threatened, and incorporated itself as a separate city. The two municipalities interlocked on several boundaries, but had drastically differing philosophies—Rohnert Park dedicated to rapid growth and compact development; Cotati retaining its farmer roots, thinking twice about every change.

Students from Sonoma State, soon to become a full four-year state university, loved Cotati. Like college students all over the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s, they embraced back to the earth movements. The unused chicken houses of Cotati ranches made perfect lowrent apartments. The tree-shaded lawn of LaPlaza Park was a wonderful place for dancing, drumming, and meditating with their friends. Music, always important in Cotati, became an even more prominent part of life, with famous bands drawing large audiences to local venues.

Students in 1973 decided their voices should be heard, and rallied supporters to overwhelm three long-time residents in an election for City Council. Ten years of change in the city’s philosophy followed, with several recall efforts, resignations of several city councilmen, firing of several city managers, and meetings that went well into the night.

As Sonoma State University changed, reflecting high-tech development in the county, and the hippies matured, so Cotati evolved also. Its location in the center of a fast-growing county at the intersection of highways 101 and 116, convenient for commuters, lured developers, and large neighborhoods of new homes and several small shopping areas were created.

The city today still reflects its varied history: a few small farms remain, usually as hobbies for their owners, often lying close to clusters of apartment dwellers. The city still has a preponderance of independent business owners, but also has a growing number of larger