Manteca, California

CREATING OPTIONS FOR WORK AT A GLANCE MANTECA, CALIFORNIA WHAT: A city of 83,000 WHERE: San Joaquin County in California’s Central Valley WEBSITE: www.ci.manteca.ca.us M anteca is a city of 21 square miles in San Joaquin County in California’s Central Valley, 76 miles east of San Francisco. It was founded in 1861 by Joshua Cowell, who claimed around 1,000 acres and built houses on what is now the corner of Main and Yosemite. In 1873, the Central Pacific Railroad laid track directly through the area. The residents wanted to refer to their new train station as “Cowell Station,” but there was already a Cowell Station near Tracy. The residents agreed to change the name to “Monteca.” But this was misprinted as “Manteca” (Spanish for “lard”) by the railroad, and the misspelled version was eventually accepted as the name of the town, becoming a town-wide in-joke, laughed at for generations. In 1918, Manteca was incorporated as a city, and Joshua Cowell became its first mayor.