A small city in the Bay Area, in Northern California. South of Richmond, north of Berkeley, near Albany. The main drag is San Pablo Avenue.

El Cerrito is a small city located in the Bay Area of eastern California, comprised of roughly 20,000 citizens. The town is located south of Richmond, north of Berkely, and is near Albany.

The town formed as a refugee camp for survivors of the 1906 San Fransisco Earthquake. Originally named Rust, after the town's first postmaster, the town's name officially became El Cerrito in 1917 and has stayed ever since. The town was originally incorporated in 1917 with a population of 1,500, and Postmaster Rust is cited as being the founding father of the town.

El Cerrito has, in total, 3.7 miles of land. The high school uses the "Gaucho" as a mascot, being the South American equivalent of a cowboy. Housing prices in the town range from $450,000 for houses on the outlying areas of town to near $800,000 for houses near the town's center, with an estimated median house value being closer to $500,000. The median age of the town is roughly 43 years old, two years below the California average. The average income is close to $73,000 a year.

Though the town saw a spike in crime during 2005 - reaching a crime rate of over double the national average, due to a large amount of thefts - crime has recently come back in line with the national average.

The local high school performs slightly worse than the national average on the SAT and is gradually becoming overcrowded, as multiple classes begin to have enrollment of 33 or more students per class. Over half of the school's students are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

I find it very funny that the name translates as "The Little Hill," because I am a very uninteresting person and that is the sort of thing I find funny.

Also, e2renata points out that the hill isn't even in El Cerrito but rather in the bordering town of Albany.



Sources for this writeup include The El Cerrito Historical Society, El Cerrito High School's School Accountability Report Card, City Data's page on El Cerrito, and Zillow's information on El Cerrito's housing market. All information was current as of 2/21/14, obviously these facts will change with time.


This writeup created as a part of the Team Better project.

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