Davis, CA

A short stretch of Eighth Street changed how American cities treated bicycles. In late July 1967, Davis installed the nation's first official city bicycle lane between A Street and Sycamore Lane. Resident proposals for Netherlands-style lanes began in 1965, and two bicycle-lane advocates won City Council seats the following year. Davis later became an early user of bicycle-only traffic signals, and its city logo carries a high-wheel bicycle. The city now has well over 100 miles of designated lanes and paths within roughly 11 square miles, including routes through residential greenbelts, schools, downtown, and the university campus. The network is used as civic space as well as transportation: the 16th annual Loopalooza in May 2026 followed a 12-mile city loop with 11 activity stations where riders could begin in either direction.

ATTRMiles530 ( talk ) / Public domain

Rail and agriculture created the town that preceded those experiments. Davis Junction opened in 1868 where lines connected Sacramento, the eastern Bay Area, and Central Valley farms. The settlement was called Davisville for livestock farmer Jerome Davis until the post office shortened the name in 1907; city incorporation followed in 1917. The University Farm opened beside town in 1908 as a teaching and research extension of UC Berkeley's College of Agriculture and became a general University of California campus in 1959. The depot, downtown grid, and campus edge remain close together, with Third Street forming a direct route between downtown and the university. Student routines, local businesses, civic events, and regional trains overlap in the same central area.

ATTRVenprof / CC BY-SA 4.0

UC Davis is the city's largest employer and the institution that most strongly shapes its working week. The university estimated an average Davis-campus population of about 36,000 students for the 2025-26 academic year and received $961 million in external research awards during fiscal 2024-25. Agriculture remains part of its scientific lineage alongside veterinary medicine, environmental research, engineering, and biomedical work. University routines extend beyond laboratories and classrooms. Unitrans serves both city and campus with drivers, supervisors, and most support staff drawn from UC Davis undergraduates. Its three historic London double-deckers and four modern double-deckers are local signatures; as of April 2026, the historic buses operated on the Saturday Farmers Market Shuttle. Central Park shows how university, city, and surrounding farms meet away from campus.

ATTRTony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States / CC BY-SA 2.0

The Davis Farmers Market began there in 1976 and marked its 50th anniversary in 2026. It operates year-round on Wednesdays and Saturdays under a pavilion created during the park's 1988-94 expansion, California's first permanent farmers-market pavilion. Growers, students, food-cooperative organizers, and local government collaborated on the market's early development. On the UC Davis Quad, the free, student-run Whole Earth Festival grew from a 1969 art-class project into a three-day Mother's Day weekend program of art, music, environmental education, and food. A Saturday ride on a historic double-decker ends at the market, while the annual loop ride and festival turn the bicycle network and campus lawns into gathering places of their own.