Tag: El Cerrito

El Cerrito is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The population was 23,549 at the time of the 2010 census.
El Cerrito was founded by refugees from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. They settled in what was then Don Víctor Castro’s Rancho San Pablo, and adjacent to the ranch owned by the family of Luís María Peralta, the Rancho San Antonio. A post office opened at the settlement in 1909 and the refugee camp became known as Rust, after William R. Rust, its first postmaster. The village’s residents did not care for the name and changed it to El Cerrito in 1916. A year later, El Cerrito was incorporated as a village with 1,500 residents. The name means “little hill” or knoll.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.7 square miles (9.6 km), all of it land. The city is at an elevation of 69 feet (21 m).
El Cerrito is located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. The hilly areas of El Cerrito provide spectacular views of its…