Tracy is the second most populated city in San Joaquin County, California, United States. The population was 93,000 at the 2020 census and estimated at 100,136 in 2024. Tracy is located inside a geographic triangle formed by Interstate 205 on the north side of the city, Interstate 5 to the east, and Interstate 580 to the southwest.
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👉 Tracy, California in the context of Central California
Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the U.S. state of California, north of Southern California (which includes Los Angeles and San Diego) and south of Northern California (which includes San Francisco and San Jose). It includes the northern portion of the San Joaquin Valley (which itself is the southern portion of the Central Valley, beginning at the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta), part of the Central Coast, the central hills of the California Coast Ranges and the foothills and mountain areas of the central Sierra Nevada.
Central California is considered to be west of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. East of the Sierra is Eastern California. The largest cities in the region (over 50,000 population), from most to least populous, are Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto, Elk Grove, Salinas, Visalia, Clovis, Tracy, Merced, Manteca, Turlock, Tulare, Madera, Lodi, Porterville, Santa Cruz, Hanford, and Delano. Over time, droughts and wildfires have increased in frequency and become less seasonal and more year-round, further straining the region's water security.
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Tracy, California in the context of San Joaquin County, California
San Joaquin County (/ˌsæn hwɑːˈkiːn/ SAN whah-KEEN; Spanish: San Joaquín, meaning "St. Joachim"), officially the County of San Joaquin, is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 779,233. The county seat is Stockton.
San Joaquin County comprises the Stockton–Lodi–Tracy metropolitan statistical area within the regional San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area. The county is located in Northern California's Central Valley just east of the very highly populated nine-county San Francisco Bay Area region. It is separated from the East Bay partly by the Diablo Range, through which there is road and rail access to Alameda County via the Altamont Pass, and partly by the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, through which there are links to Contra Costa County via road, rail, and shipping, and to Solano County via road. One of the smaller counties by area in California, it has a high population density and is growing rapidly due to overflow from the Bay Area.
Tracy, California in the context of Interstate 580 (California)
Interstate 580 (I-580) is an approximately 76-mile-long (122 km) east–west auxiliary Interstate Highway in Northern California. The heavily traveled spur route of I-80 runs from US Route 101 (US 101) in San Rafael in the San Francisco Bay Area to I-5 at a point outside the southern city limits of Tracy in the Central Valley. I-580 forms a concurrency with I-80 between Albany and Oakland, the latter of which is the location of the MacArthur Maze interchange immediately east of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. I-580 provides a connection from the Bay Area to the southern San Joaquin Valley and Southern California via I-5, as I-5 bypasses the Bay Area to the east.
A portion of I-580 is called the MacArthur Freeway, after General Douglas MacArthur. Other portions are named the John T. Knox Freeway (after a former speaker pro tempore of the California State Assembly), the Eastshore Freeway (after its location on San Francisco Bay), the Arthur H. Breed Jr. Freeway (after a former California State assemblyperson and senator—the stretch itself lying between the cities of Castro Valley and Dublin), the William Elton "Brownie" Brown Freeway (after a Tracy resident instrumental in determining the route of I-5 through the San Joaquin Valley), the Sgt. Daniel Sakai Memorial Highway (after the Castro Valley resident and Oakland SWAT officer killed in the 2009 shootings of Oakland police officers), and the John P. Miller Memorial Highway (after the Lodi resident and California Highway Patrol officer killed while chasing down a DUI driver).
Tracy, California in the context of Altamont Pass
Altamont Pass, formerly Livermore Pass, is a low mountain pass in the Diablo Range of Northern California between Livermore in the Livermore Valley and Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley. The name is actually applied to two distinct but nearby crossings of the range. The lower of the two, at an elevation of 741 ft (226 m), carries two railroad rights-of-way (ROWs) and Altamont Pass Road, part of the old Lincoln Highway and the original alignment of US 50 before it was bypassed in 1937. The bypass route travels over the higher summit, at 1,009 ft (308 m), and now carries Interstate 580, a major regional highway heavily congested by Central Valley suburbanization.
Of the two railroad lines through the old pass, one is still in use: the ex-Western Pacific line built in 1908 over the pass, which is sometimes known as the Altamont Corridor, now owned by Union Pacific. It carries freight trains as well as the Altamont Corridor Express, which gives its occasional name (ACE) and operates between Stockton, Livermore, Pleasanton, Fremont, and San Jose. The other and older right-of-way was the line built in 1869 with a 1,200-foot-long (370 m) summit tunnel by the original Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) as part of the transcontinental railroad. After 1879, when a sea level ferry crossing at the Carquinez Strait replaced the 1869 route, it remained in use for other purposes by the Southern Pacific. In 1984 it was abandoned and deeded to Alameda County by Southern Pacific Railroad in favor of trackage rights on the aforementioned ex-Western Pacific line.