Rancho Del Mar

This is the neighborhood that is on the far northwestern corner of American Canyon. Rancho del Mar is what I would consider a prototypical 21st Century suburban neighborhood. The kind of place that you can find reiterated one million times over across the country: a neighborhood built as a satellite to a major metropolitan city, whose residents are those workers who are basically middle class, can’t afford to live closer and are just trying to find a place that is relatively safe where they can have average relatively uneventful lives. (“Uneventful” at least in the sense of not having to deal with life in the city: basically, easy parking, parks, okay schools, etc.)

You can roughly divide up the neighborhood into two parts, a western half and an eastern half. The eastern half, closer to the highway is the older section, dating back to the 1950’s, which as you no doubt know means lots of Ranch style homes--the prototypical suburban home of the Post War period.

On the western half of Rancho del Mar, the homes are distinctly newer, dating mostly from the 1990s. The homes here are basically Contemporary versions of Mediterranean style homes. One look and you know exactly what I mean: large two story homes with adobe walls, high door stoops and red-tiled roofs.

The homes of Rancho del Mar run around $300 K, with those prices that fall below that amount tending to be on the eastern, older half of the neighborhood, and the bigger newer homes of the western half rising as high as $450K.

So does this neighborhood fulfill the other promises of suburban life: low crime and good schools?

In terms of schools it largely does. On the elementary and middle school level, scores and other indicators like API are really strong. American Canyon High School, however, is a middling school.

If schools are average to slightly above average, crimes is similarly below average. Specifically, in the last 6 months there have only been a half dozen assaults and about the same number of burglaries. Most of the assaults have been reports of domestic violence, sadly. (These are not the kind of assaults however that we mostly worry about.)

As far as nightlife and that sort of thing go, there is not much around this area. You do have the usual kind of fast food sort of joints along Lincoln which heads up to Napa County. There is a Caffino and Subway and a Walmart around that area for example. Your best bet around here is either to head up into Napa or to make the long trek into the city for excitement.

As far as commuting goes, you are more than an hour away from SF and Walnut Creek. The only somewhat large city you are close to is Fairfield--which is not exactly an economic powerhouse.

Overall this is a very middle of the road sort of location, but one which you might do if you are just looking for a middle of the road sort of existence.