Click on the Sonoma Valley Sunset image to enlarge

Sonoma Valley Sunset

Sonoma Valley Sunset captures a stormy sunset over an old vineyard. Sonoma Valley Sunset occurred on a stormy winter afternoon.

The Sonoma Valley is known as the Valley of the Moon. It is the birthplace of the California Wine Industry. Many of the earliest vineyards and wineries of California are located in this area captured in the Sonoma Valley Sunset photograph. Many of these old vineyards as seen in the Sonoma Valley Sunset image survived both prohibition and a phylloxera epidemic that occurred in the 1870′s.

The valley is also historic in the settlement of California. The valley was home to Native Americans; the Miwok, Pomo and Wintun people. These Native American peoples called it the Valley of the Moon in their legends. Miwok stories tell of a Moon that would rise from the valley. General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo first used the term in a report to the California State Legislature in 1850.

The valley was selected by Franciscan missionaries to build the northernmost mission of 21 missions built in California. Mission San Francisco Solano was built in 1823.

The indigenous peoples of the area were dispossessed of their land and decimated by diseases to which Europeans were resistant. Mexican General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo  laid out the town of Sonoma with a plaza. The historic plaza of the town was and still is the central focal point of the valley.

Vallejo would later transfer his allegiance from Mexico to  US statehood in 1850. General Vallejo accumulated land holdings and guided the development of the town and large ranches throughout the valley. California’s first wineries would be established. In 1857 the Buena Vista Winery was built and in 1858 the Gundlach Bundschu winery.

Sonoma Valley Sunset captures some of the beauty of the Valley of the Moon. The old vineyard in Sonoma Valley Sunset is one of many vineyards in the valley that began the winery industry of this region of California.