Novato, California

Novato ( ) is a city in northern Marin County, in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 51,904. It officially became a city on January 20th, 1960.
Novato is about northwest of San Rafael and about north of San Francisco on U.S. 101. 
History.
The first people to live in the area were the Coast Miwok, who set up several villages in the area. The location of one of them, Olompali, is now a State Historic Park. In the early 1800s, the Mexican government gave the land in the form of grants to various people. The territory became part of the United States, along with the rest of California in 1848. The town stayed rather small until the late 1900s, when the population boomed due to the vast amount of people settling in the area.