The valley and upland areas, where contemporary Livermore is located, was home to Chochenyo speaking peoples. As a group, these people are considered Ohlone Costonoan with distinct cultural affiliation in contrast to and closely bordering the Bay Miwok to the north and the Valley Yokuts to the east. Four tribelets, the Yulien, Ssaoam, Ssouyn, and the Pelnen, occupied the valley floor with territory extending into the hills. Semi-permanent villages were located near water drainages at the valley floor within the current urban limits of Livermore with seasonal camps in the surrounding uplands.
A Spanish expedition led by Pedro Fages skirted the western edge of Livermore Valley in 1772. Shortly afterwards, the Spanish Mission of San Jose was founded in 1797 on the slopes of what is modern day Fremont. Mission San Jose viewed the people and land stretching to the east as under their control. Livermore Valley was called the Valley of San Jose by the Friars and actively recruited native peoples of the valley into the mission system. In contrast, the valley was also used as a staging area for raids on Mission San Jose by neighboring tribes in this early period and beyond.
During the first seven years of the 1800s, five hundred and two individuals were baptized at Mission San Jose from the four tribelets in the Livermore Valley. In this time, Spanish military conducted raids throughout the East Bay using the valley as a natural corridor for movement. Deaths from measles outbreaks were recorded in Mission San Jose in 1806 which forced recruiting beyond the Livermore Valley and into the Altimont range. The Livermore-Amador Valley from 1800 to about 1837 was primarily used as grazing land for the Mission San Jose’s growing herds of cattle, sheep and horses. The valley helped San Jose Mission emerge as one of the more wealthy Spanish enclaves. As a result of the secularization of the mission system, in 1839, two large ranchos were created that encompassed the Livermore Valley; Rancho Las Positas and Rancho Valle de San Jose. Many Native groups left the San Jose Mission during this period and reestablished themselves in communities in the East Bay, including the Livermore Valley.
The 48,000-acre (19,000 ha) Rancho Las Positas grant, which includes most of Livermore, was made to ranchers Robert Livermore and Jose Noriega in 1839. Most land grants were given with little or no cost to the recipients. Robert Livermore (1799-1858) was a British citizen who had jumped from a British merchant sailing ship stopping in Monterey, California, in 1822. He became a naturalized Mexican citizen who had converted to Catholicism in 1823 as was required for citizenship and legal residence. After working for a number of years as a majordomo (ranch foreman), Livermore married on 5 May 1838 the widow Maria Josefa de Jesus Higuera (1815–1879), daughter of Jose Loreto Higuera, grantee of Rancho Los Tularcitos, at the Mission San José. Livermore, after he got his rancho in 1839, was as interested in viticulture and horticulture as he was in cattle and horses, despite the fact that about the only source of income was the sale of cow hides and tallow. In the early 1840s he moved his family to the Livermore valley to his new rancho as the second non-Indian family to settle in the Livermore valley area, and after building a home he was the first in the area in 1846 to direct the planting of vineyards and orchards of pears and olives. Typical of most early rancho dwellings, the first building on his ranch was an adobe on Las Positas Creek near the western end of today’s Las Positas Road. After the Americans took control of California in 1847 and gold was discovered in 1848, he started making money by selling California longhorn cattle to the thousands of hungry California Gold Rush miners who soon arrived. The non-Indian population skyrocketed, and cattle were suddenly worth much more than the $1.00-$3.00 their hides could bring. With his new wealth and with goods flooding into newly rich California, in 1849 Livermore bought a two-story “Around the Horn” disassembled house that had been shipped about 18,000 miles (29,000 km) on a sailing ship around Cape Horn from the East Coast. It is believed to be the first wooden building in the Livermore Tri-Valley.[citation needed]
During the Gold Rush, Livermore’s ranch became a popular “first day” stopping point for prospectors and businessmen leaving San Francisco or San Jose and headed for Sacramento and the Mother Lode gold country. Most horse traffic went by way of Altamont Pass just east of Livermore. Robert Livermore was a very accommodating host and welcomed nearly all that stopped by with lodging and meals.
Robert Livermore died in 1858 and was buried at Mission San Jose before the establishment of the town that bears his name. His ranch included much of the present-day city. The town of Livermore, named in honor of Robert Livermore, was platted and registered on November 4, 1869, as a railroad town by William Martin Mendenhall, who had first met Livermore while marching through the valley with John C. Fremont’s California Battalion in 1846 as they were recruited to occupy the surrendering Californio towns captured by the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Squadron.
The Livermore Ranch post office, in Robert Livermore’s home, operated from 1851 to 1853. The first significant settlement in the valley was Laddsville, a small settlement of about 75 that had grown up around the hotel established by Alphonso Ladd in 1864 on what is now Junction Avenue. The official U.S. post office in Livermore opened on Jan. 15, 1869. It was called Nottingham in the mistaken belief that Robert Livermore had been born in Nottingham, England. (He was actually born in Springfield, Essex England.) The post office’s name was changed to Livermore on July 7, 1870.
The original Western Pacific Railroad Company in September 1869 completed its railroad connection from Alameda Terminal to Sacramento over the nearby Altamont Pass in the east and Niles Canyon on the west with a stop and station on the land donated by Mendenhall and adjacent to the town he’d laid out.
The railroad greatly accelerated Livermore’s growth. By 1870 the Western Pacific had been absorbed by the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Central Pacific was later acquired by the Southern Pacific Railroad and then the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the tracks through town today, although these are primarily the tracks of the “second” Western Pacific Railroad that was founded in 1903 and absorbed into the UP in 1983.[citation needed]
Private grade schools were operating in Livermore from the 1860s on. The Livermore Collegiate Institute was founded in 1870, and the Union High School (later called Livermore High) graduated its first class of students in 1896. Petroleum was discovered near Livermore and become a valuable asset. Extensive coal deposits were mined near Corral Hollow by the Livermore Coal Company. In September 1871 Laddsville mostly burned down, and the people rebuilt their homes and businesses nearer the railroad in what is now downtown Livermore. Until 1875 the townspeople enjoyed bull fights in a small bullring on many Sundays, and on other occasions a captured grizzly bear might be pitted against a longhorn bull. Apparently, roping a grizzly was thought then to be a great sport. By 1876 the town had grown and a fire company, churches, a bank, and a library were built. Livermore was officially incorporated by the state as a city on April 1, 1876, its original city limits being the line a block north of 1st Street on the north and Livermore Avenue (then Lizzie Street) on the east. The part of the west side north of 5th Street was bounded by Q Street, and the part of it south of 5th Street by I Street. The part of the south side east of I Street was bounded by 6th Street, and the part of it west of I Street by 5th Street.
During Livermore’s early years, it was well known for large hotels that graced the downtown street corners, before new buildings replaced them. Livermore after the 1880s is also notable for the Wente Vineyards, Concannon Vineyard, Cresta Blanca Winery and many other wineries. Since it has a Mediterranean climate, gravelly soil, warm days and cool nights, it was a good location to grow wine grapes. By 1880 the extensive winter wheat and hay crop lands were being replaced by vineyards. Extensive chromite deposits were found and exploited for a time. In 1885, the Remillard Brick Company was producing an extensive line of bricks and employing over 100 men. A telephone line connected Livermore to Arroyo Valley by 1886, and electric lights were introduced by 1889. By 1890 Livermore had over 20 miles (32 km) of streets. Livermore originally had a Boot Hill called the Old Knoll Cemetery.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Livermore Valley attracted the creation of sanitariums due to the warm climate. From 1894 to 1960, the Livermore Sanitarium was in operation for the treatment of alcoholism and mental disorders; and from 1918 to ca.1960, the Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium was in operation in the town for the treatment of tuberculosis.
In 1909, the Livermore Carnegie Library and Park opened after taking advantage of a Carnegie library grant. As the city grew and larger libraries were needed, other libraries were built, and the original site was converted into a historic center and park.
In 1942, the U.S. government bought 692 acres (280 ha) of ranch land, bounded by Vasco and Greenville roads and East Avenue, and built the Livermore Naval Air Station. The primary mission of the base was to train Navy pilots. This facility operated until it was decommissioned in 1946 after the end of World War II. On 5 January 1951, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, U.S. Navy, formally transferred the former NAS Livermore in its entirety to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for use by the University of California’s Radiation Laboratory. In 1952, the government established Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), named after famous physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, as the site of a second laboratory for the study of nuclear energy like the research being done at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The laboratory was run by the University of California. Edward Teller was a co-founder of LLNL and was both its director and associate director for many years. In 1956, the California campus of Sandia National Laboratories opened across East Avenue from LLNL. Both LLNL and Sandia are technically on U.S. government property just outside the city’s jurisdiction limits, but with employment at LLNL at about 6,800 and Sandia/California at about 1,150 they are Livermore’s largest employers. In 2004, Cornerstone Fellowship remodeled and moved into former indoor soccer facility, making it the largest indoor auditorium venue in the Tri-Valley, with weekly attendance in the thousands.