Rural Roots Sunday - In the City But Not In the City

“…The Rural Area is valued in our community for its aesthetic and cultural significance, as well as the economic and educational opportunities that agriculture provides. Our commitment to maintaining the Rural Area is clear and codified in core planning documents…” Elk Grove General Plan, December 2025

We moved out here 5 years ago.

Before that we were in the Bay Area, house next to house next to house. And I want to be clear, we loved that house. It was a good home and we were happy in it. We just had no room to grow. We wanted space, and we wanted to be able to have animals, and there was simply nowhere to put any of it.

So we started looking. We looked around Galt. We looked out toward Davis. We drove a lot of country roads that year.

The problem was always the same. We would find a place with real acreage, and it would be forty-five minutes from anything. No grocery store, no town, nothing close. You could have the space, but you would spend your life driving to get to everything else.

Then we came out to the Sheldon area, and it was different.

The first thing I noticed was the trees coming over the road. That sounds like a small thing, but it is not. You turn off the main road and the canopy closes in over you, and you feel like you have gone somewhere. There is a small town feel out here that we had not found anywhere else we looked.

And then we did the math on where we actually were, and it turned out we were about fifteen minutes from everything we needed.

That was the thing that sold us, and honestly it took living here a while to fully understand why it works. We are in the city, but we are not in the city. The rules out here in rural Elk Grove are what allow us to have the space. Bigger lots, wells, septic, room for animals. That is not an accident of geography, it is how this area is set up.

So on one side of us we have all the open ground running out toward Wilton and Dillard, with that family, small town atmosphere that is honestly one of the best things about being out here. And on the other side, if we need to go to a restaurant or run into Target, that is fifteen minutes away.

I have thought about this a lot since we moved. What we found out here is not just space. Plenty of places have space. What we found was space that is still close to things. That combination is rare, and I could not find it anywhere else, and I looked hard.

That is the part I would want people to understand. If the rules that keep this area rural go away, you do not get this back somewhere else. You get the space forty-five minutes out, and you get the convenience packed in tight, and the thing in the middle just stops existing.

Five years in, and I still notice the trees over the road every time I turn onto our street.

By a Rural Elk Grove Resident