About Rancho Cordova

Rancho Cordova is a city in Sacramento County, California, USA, that incorporated in 2003. It is part of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area. The population was 64,776 at the 2010 census. Rancho Cordova is the Sacramento area's largest employment sub-center, with a daily influx of over 55,000 commuting employees, many of those commuters use Sacramento Regional Transit's Gold Line. In 2010 Rancho Cordova was named as a winner of the All-America City Award.

Originally called Mayhew's Crossing and Hangtown Crossing (circa 1855) during the Gold Rush era, the area was renamed Mayhew Station and Mills Station (circa 1900), respectively. The city itself was named after the Cordova Vineyard, which was located in the center of the Rancho Rio de los Americanos land grant. Original names of the town included Cordova Vineyards and Cordova Village, before it was officially named Rancho Cordova when a post office was established in the community in 1955. In the Gold Rush era of mid 19th century California, certain Placer mining activities took place in the Rancho Cordova environs, some traces of which disturbance are extant. The elevation of the generally level terrain is approximately 118 feet (36 m) above mean sea level. Lone Star Gravel Company and other companies have historically extracted younger gravels at depths of 30 to 40 feet (12 m) without encountering groundwater, which is characteristically found at about 100 feet (30 m). Partially confined groundwater generally flows to the southwest. For many years, Rancho Cordova was the Community called Mills, located in the eastern part of the Brighton Township.. It was called 'Mills' as early as 1893, supposedly because of the old grist mills that were close by along the river. At the top of Bradshaw, along the American River, close to the oak tree that marked the northwest boundary of the Spanish Land Grant, Rancho Rio De Los Americanos, there are still some remains of foundations. You can locate them by looking for the Grist Mill Dam Recreation Area along the American River Parkway. The southwestern boundary of the grant was 300 feet west of Bradshaw not far north of Florin Road. The boundary then went due east over to "Grantline" Road, and northeast along the roadway.

There were attempts to incorporate Rancho Cordova in 1961 and in 1978. The 1978 effort was kept alive over the next 20 years, and finally got to the ballot in November 2002. It passed with a record 77% of voters in support! It's a record vote that still stands today.

The 2010 United States Census reported that Rancho Cordova had a population of 64,776. The population density was 1,912.3 people per square mile (738.3/km²). The racial makeup of Rancho Cordova was 39,123 (60.4%) White, 8,561 (13.1%) African American, 668 (1.0%) Native American, 7,831 (12.1%) Asian (3.6% Filipino, 2.0% Indian, 1.6% Vietnamese, 1.4% Chinese, 1.0% Korean, 0.4% Japanese, 2.0% Other), 556 (0.9%) Pacific Islander, 5,517 (8.5%) from other races, and 4,520 (7.0%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12,740 persons (19.7%).