Rossmoor, Walnut Creek, California
Rossmoor is a gated community in Walnut Creek, California, with a population of about 9,200. It was one of the first "active adult" communities for residents 55 years or older in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In the 1930s, the shipping tycoon Stanley Dollar constructed an estate in Tice Creek Valley near Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County. The Dollars bred purebred Hereford cattle and raised show horses. Over the years they expanded the estate of 1,436 acres (5.8 km2) to 2,200 acres (8.9 km2).
In 1960, R. Stanley Dollar, Jr. (the son of the shipping magnate) sold the family estate to Ross W. Cortese. Cortese owned a development company called Rossmoor Corporation. He had been active in Orange County and the unincorporated community there named Rossmoor was one of his projects. After finishing Rossmoor he started on a new idea of private gated retirement communities for active seniors called , starting with the Seal Beach Leisure World in Seal Beach in 1960.
Leisure World promised low-cost housing, coupled with services appropriate to Cortese's view of retirement; golf courses, swimming pools, clubhouses, riding stables, transportation, medical services and a host of administrative employees so that the residents did not have to bother themselves with house and yard maintenance, even little things like waste collection, cable television service and watering the lawn.
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