Livermore is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley, giving its name to the Livermore Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisco Bay Area.
Livermore was a railroad town named for Robert Livermore, a local rancher who settled in the area in the 1840s. It is the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for which the chemical element livermorium is named (and thus, placing the city's name in the periodic table). It is also the California site of Sandia National Laboratories, which is headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its south side is home to local vineyards, and its downtown district is being redeveloped .
The United States Census Bureau defines an urban area of Tri-Valley-area cities, with Livermore as the principal city: the Livermore–Pleasanton–Dublin, CA urban area had a 2020 population of 240,381, making it the 167th largest in the United States.
History
Indigenous peoples The valley and upland areas where contemporary Livermore is located were home to Chochenyo-speaking peoples. As a group, these people are considered Ohlone Costanoan, with distinct cultural affiliations from the neighboring Bay Miwok to the north and Valley Yokuts to the east. Four tribelets—the Yulien, Ssaoam, Ssouyn, and Pelnen—occupied the valley floor, with territory extending into the surrounding hills. Semi-permanent villages stood near water drainages on the valley floor within the current urban limits of Livermore, with seasonal camps in the surrounding uplands.
After the founding of Mission San José in 1797, the four Livermore Valley tribelets were heavily affected by Spanish recruitment: during the first seven years of the 1800s, 502 individuals from these groups were baptized at the mission. Measles outbreaks in 1806 contributed to further population decline and pushed recruiting beyond the valley into the Altamont range.
Native groups left Mission San José after secularization in the 1830s and reestablished communities in the East Bay, including in the Livermore Valley. They worked as laborers rather than rely on now-depleted traditional food sources. But as the population grew thanks to the 1848 Gold Rush and influxes of railroad workers, work became difficult to find. By 1906, only 28 Indigenous residents remained in the Livermore Valley, and most were gone by 1914.
1700s A Spanish expedition led by Pedro Fages skirted the western edge of Livermore Valley in 1772. Mission San José was founded in 1797 in what is now Fremont. The friars at Mission San José treated the people and land to the east as under mission control, and the area became known to them as the Valley of San José. Neighboring tribes also used the valley as a staging area for raids on the mission in this period.
1800s From 1800 to about 1837, the Livermore-Amador Valley was used as grazing land for Mission San José cattle, sheep, and horses. After the secularization of the mission system in the 1830s, two Mexican land grants encompassed the valley: Rancho Las Positas and Rancho Valle de San José.
Rancho Las Positas
Robert Livermore (1799–1858), the city's namesake, was a British merchant sailor who came ashore at Monterey and later settled in California. In 1839, the Rancho Las Positas grant, which included much of present-day Livermore, was made to Livermore and Jose Noriega. In the early 1840s, Livermore moved his family from the Sunol Valley to Rancho Las Positas, becoming the second non-Indigenous family to settle in the Livermore Valley.
After the United States took control of California and the California Gold Rush began in 1848, Livermore sold cattle to miners traveling between the Bay Area and the gold fields. His ranch became a stopping point for travelers heading toward Sacramento and the Mother Lode by way of Altamont Pass; the area consequently became known as Livermore's Valley.
Founding
Robert Livermore died in 1858. The first settlement in the valley was Laddsville, which developed around a hotel established by Alponso Ladd in the 1860s.
The city's founder, William Mendenhall, owned land in the Livermore Valley and in 1869 set aside for a townsite. He named the town Livermore after his friend Robert Livermore. Livermore was platted and registered on November 4, 1869, as a railroad town. The Western Pacific Railroad built tracks on land previously signed over by Robert Livermore, and placed a station on land donated by Mendenhall.
The new railroad connection significantly accelerated Livermore's growth. Impetus was also added when Laddsville merged into Livermore after a fire in 1871. The city was incorporated on April 1, 1876.
Early Livermore
In its early decades, Livermore's economy was based on wheat, cattle, coal, oil, roses, and wine. Wineries founded in the 1880s, including Wente Vineyards, Concannon Vineyards, and Cresta Blanca Winery, shaped the valley's wine industry. Coal was mined in the nearby Corral Hollow area, which between 1895 and 1905 was among California's larger coal-producing districts. Smaller contributions to the town's economy include extensive chromite deposits found nearby, and magnesite deposits on Red Mountain.
By the 1870s, Livermore had a fire company, churches, a bank, a library, and schools. Electric lights were introduced by 1888, and by 1890 the town had more than of streets. Petroleum and natural-gas seeps have been documented in the Livermore Valley, and oil and gas exploration occurred in and around the city during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
1900s
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Livermore Valley attracted sanitariums on account of its climate and air. The Livermore Sanitarium operated from 1894 to 1960 for the treatment of alcoholism and mental disorders, and the Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium operated from 1918 to about 1960 for the treatment of tuberculosis. In 1909, the Livermore Carnegie Library and Park opened with support from a Carnegie library grant.
The city remained agricultural until the mid-20th century. In 1942, the U.S. government acquired of ranch land and built Livermore Naval Air Station to train Navy pilots during World War II. The facility closed after the war and was later transferred for use by the University of California's Radiation Laboratory, which became Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The growth of Livermore after World War II was shaped by the establishment of LLNL in 1952 and the Sandia National Laboratories California site in 1956, along with suburban expansion from the wider Bay Area. LLNL caused the city to grow into a technological center, while suburban expansion increased the population. Specifically, the city's population approximately tripled between 1970 and 2000 as Bay Area residents moved eastward.
2000s In the early 2000s, much work was done by the city and a highway was redirected to make the downtown walkable, which previously was a place to pass through more than visit even for residents of the town.
Geography
The Livermore Valley lies within the Diablo Range, part of the California Coast Ranges around the San Francisco Bay Area. It is ~15 mi long east-west and 10 mi north-south. The valley has an east–west orientation, with passes connecting the Bay Area to the Central Valley. These passes are used by highways and rail lines.
Watercourses draining Livermore include Arroyo Mocho, Arroyo Valle, Arroyo Seco, and Arroyo Las Positas. The principal aquifer underlying the city is the Mocho Subbasin. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , nearly all of it land. Several local seismic zones lie near the city, including the Greenville Fault, Tesla Fault, and Livermore Fault.
The soil in the valley is classified as very gravelly coarse sandy loam. It was formed from very gravelly alluvium made of sedimentary and metasedimentary rock.
Climate
Livermore has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa), with hot, dry summers and cool winters with occasional rain. The climate is strongly influenced by winds from the Pacific, lowering temperatures compared to the hotter parts of the Central Valley immediately eastward.Shabram, Patrick L. "The Viticultural Districts of the Livermore Valley AVA." Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association, 2019. Funding supported by grant from the CA Dept. of Food and Agriculture. Complication is introduced by the fact that Pacific winds enter the valley from multiple locations. Snow is rare but has occurred on surrounding hills and occasionally in the valley.
Demographics
Racial and ethnic composition + Livermore, California – Racial and ethnic composition Race / Ethnicity Pop. 2000 Pop. 2010 Pop. 2020 % 2000 % 2010 % 2020 White alone, not Hispanic or Latino 54,587 52,397 48,449 74.42% 64.71% 55.08% Black or African American alone, not Hispanic or Latino 1,094 1,562 1,604 1.49% 1.93% 1.82% Native American or Alaska Native alone, not Hispanic or Latino 315 251 203 0.43% 0.31% 0.23% Asian alone, not Hispanic or Latino 4,171 6,643 12,633 5.69% 8.20% 14.36% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander alone, not Hispanic or Latino 189 231 209 0.26% 0.29% 0.24% Other race alone, not Hispanic or Latino 185 202 500 0.25% 0.25% 0.57% Mixed race or multiracial, not Hispanic or Latino 2,263 2,762 5,379 3.09% 3.41% 6.12% Hispanic or Latino of any race 10,541 16,920 18,978 14.37% 20.90% 21.58% Total 73,345 80,968 87,955 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
2020 census At the 2020 United States census, Livermore had a population of 87,955 and a population density of approximately 3,326 people per square mile. The median age was 39.9 years. About 70.7% of occupied housing units were owner-occupied and 29.3% were renter-occupied.
2010 census The 2010 United States census reported that Livermore had a population of 80,968. The population density was 3,216.1 people per square mile. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.5%, and the rental vacancy rate was 4.8%.
Income In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated Livermore's median household income at $153,602 and per capita income at $71,179. About 2.4% of families and 4.4% of the population were below the poverty line.
Voter registration , there were 53,792 registered voters in Livermore; 21,158 were Democrats, 15,061 were Republicans, and 14,499 were independents or decline-to-state voters.
Economy
Laboratories The Livermore area contains two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the city's largest employer (17% as of 2025FY 2024-25 Annual Comprehensive Fiscal Report, City of Livermore, 2025.) and conducts national-security, energy, scientific, and technology research. The laboratory's stated responsibilities include ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the United States nuclear deterrent; its researchers co-discovered livermorium.
The California site of Sandia National Laboratories is also in Livermore. It is the city's second largest employer (~4% as of 2025). Sandia describes its mission as focused on national security. The California campus is managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International.
i-GATE In 2010, the national laboratories, the city of Livermore, and regional partners established i-GATE, an innovation hub and business incubator focused on energy and transportation technologies. The campus has shared facilities with Robot Garden, a community workshop and hackerspace.
Wine
The Livermore Valley American Viticultural Area dates commercial viticulture to the 1840s, when Robert Livermore planted the first vines in the valley. In the 1880s, C. H. Wente, James Concannon, and Charles Wetmore founded wineries in the Livermore Valley.
Top employers