to
Update
is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. As of January 1, 2008, the population of Santa Rosa was approximately 161,496 residents. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont.
Santa Rosa's Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of 486,630, making it the 12th largest in California and the 104th largest in the United States.
The city is part of the North Bay region, which includes such cities as Sonoma, Healdsburg and Sebastopol. It lies along the U.S. Route 101 corridor, approximately 55 miles (90 km) north of San Francisco, via the Golden Gate Bridge.
Santa Rosa lies on the Santa Rosa Plain; its eastern extremities stretch into the Valley of the Moon, and the Sonoma Creek watershed known as the Sonoma Valley, while its western edge lies in the Laguna de Santa Rosa catchment basin.
The city is in the watershed of Santa Rosa Creek, which rises on Hood Mountain and discharges to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Tributary basins to Santa Rosa Creek lying significantly in the city are Brush Creek, Matanzas Creek, Colgan Creek and Piner Creek. Other water bodies within the city include Fountaingrove Lake, Lake Ralphine, and Santa Rosa Creek Reservoir.
The prominent visual feature is Hood Mountain seen to the east. To the southeast, Taylor Mountain and Sonoma Mountain are readily visible from much of the city.