Rio Vista is a city in the eastern reaches of Solano County, California, set on the Sacramento River in the Delta region where the river's channels fan out toward the bay. The 2020 census counted 10,005 residents. The city promotes itself as the Gateway to the Delta, and its identity is inseparable from the water. The settlement began in 1853, when Col. Nathan H. Davis established a community at the mouth of Cache Slough, and it later moved to its present riverside site. Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rio Vista was a working river town, its economy built on fishing and a salmon cannery that supplied fresh fish and canned salmon to San Francisco and beyond. In 1918, a bridge to Brannan Island made the city the trading center of the lower Delta. The river remains the town's centerpiece. The Rio Vista Bridge, formally the Helen Madere Memorial Bridge, carries State Route 12 across the Sacramento River and is notable as a drawbridge designed by Joseph Strauss, the engineer behind the Golden Gate Bridge. The surrounding Delta waters — the Sacramento and San Joaquin river system — are among the West's great recreational fisheries, drawing anglers for striped bass, sturgeon, and salmon, along with boaters and windsurfers who use the region's famously steady winds. Public education is provided by River Delta Unified School District, headquartered in the city and serving Rio Vista and nearby Delta communities. For residents, Rio Vista offers a small-town, waterfront lifestyle with larger-city access: the Bay Area, Napa Valley wine country, and the Sacramento region are all within a manageable drive, and the Delta's marinas and levees are on the doorstep. The city has grown as a retirement and commuter destination while retaining its river-town character.