Dixon Then and Now: Dixon Chose to Remain Small

I had heard that at one time Dixon was larger than Vacaville, but upon checking found that not to be true. They were both equally small in the early years.

In this column I’ll explore how Dixon’s two closest cities, Vacaville and Davis, outstripped Dixon in terms of population and area.

Vacaville is the oldest of the three, being founded in 1852. Both Dixon and Davis were founded in 1868, about the time the major railroad was built through the area.

A couple years later at the time of the 1870 census Dixon recorded 317 souls, Vacaville had 343, and Davis (or Davisville as it was originally called) had approximately 500.

Even at the time of the 1900 census, the three towns were still neck and neck: Vacaville led the pack with 1,220, followed by Dixon with 783 and Davis with 700. By the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II in 1940, Dixon had about 1,100 people, and Vacaville and Davis both had around 1,600 residents.

It was after the War that Dixon began dropping behind, with 1,700 residents compared to Davis and Vacaville, both with populations over 3,100 (in 1950). Twenty years later in 1970, Dixon had only 4,400 compared to over 20,000 for each of the two other cities. Finally, by the millennium year of 2000, Vacaville had shot ahead of everyone with 88,000 teeming people compared to 60,000 for Davis and 16,000 for Dixon.

Why did the three cities grow as they did? As one would expect, Davis outgrew Dixon primarily because of the college campus, which first opened in 1908 and became a full-fledged University of California in 1959 (lore has it that Dixon was considered for the campus as well). At any rate, UC Davis currently has around 32,000 students when running full throttle, tended to by 30,000 employees. Davis also has the Sutter Davis hospital, and numerous agriculture-related companies located in and around the city. Davis is also at the railroad junction between the transcontinental railroad and a branch that runs north to Woodland and beyond.

As time went on, however, the well-informed and –intentioned citizens of Davis began to question their city’s growth, especially when one projection had the city attaining 90,000 people by 1990. One of the evidences that Davis isn’t thrilled about growth is that the narrow Richards Boulevard railroad underpass was never widened to allow easier automobile access to the downtown. Reportedly, Davis now has in place a population restriction plan.  

The wild card for growth in Davis is the university, which operates independently of the city by law, owns large swaths of open land, and continues to add new buildings regularly.  

Looking at Vacaville – its early days revolved around agriculture, with food processing plants and orchards nearby. As time went on, though, various projects attached themselves to the city. In 1921 the Nut Tree restaurant first opened, and then expanded over the years and added an airport. During World War II nearby Travis Air Force Base opened, and now about 10,000 military and civilian personnel work there.

A few years later, in 1951, the California Medical Facility was built in Vacaville, and by 1986 it was said to be the nation’s largest prison. In 1976 the Vaca Valley Industrial Park opened and in 1983 another state prison was built on the edge of town. All of these organizations and services hired people, and many of them lived in Vacaville.

Add to that the major big-box- and outlet-store shopping districts that have sprung up near the freeway in Vacaville, plus Genentech and several other bio-medical companies moving in, and you have the formula for heavy growth.

But some have worked to limit growth in the Lagoon and Pleasants valleys areas of Vacaville, wanting to preserve open space areas or rich farming lands. In 1980, there was a move to oust slow-growth members of the city council.

And now back to Dixon. Many in Dixon are plenty happy to go visit or shop at all the large stores in Vacaville or the charming shops and restaurants of Davis, but prefer to keep their own town small. This was made clear when Dixon voters passed Measure B in the mid-1980s, limiting the increase of the number of houses to three percent per year. Dixon residents voted again in the 1990s to perpetuate this rule.

Dixon has so far decided not to exist on both sides of Freeway 80, which Davis and Vacaville have done. It turned down a Home Depot store and a racetrack, but did allow in a Walmart and Tractor Supply Store.

Dixon Mayor Jack Batchelor, Jr., says, “There’s always the feeling that Dixon is a small ag town … (Dixon) didn’t want to have rapid growth like Vacaville.”

One factor in the development of the three cities, forcing them to sprawl outward into farm land, is the tradition of low residential buildings of no more than two or three stories. If people are interested in keeping rich farm land and open spaces intact, city governments will need to encourage vertical development in the form of high-rise living and working spaces, as is happening in the Bay Area.

Highrises in Dixon would probably make Mr. Dickson turn over in his grave.