The California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children was privately founded in Vallejo 1883 "to provide and maintain a school and asylum for the feeble-minded, in which they may be trained to usefulness."

The Home was taken over by the State of California just two years after its founding. By 1890, the institution, having outgrown facilities in Vallejo and then Santa Clara, purchased 1,670 acres of rural land south of Glen Ellen. On November 24, 1891, the Home relocated its 148 residents, transporting them here from Santa Clara in a specially hired Southern Pacific train.

In 1914, Jack London published the story, "Told in the Drooling Ward" which depicted an institution not unlike the Sonoma Home, which is only a few miles from London's Glenn Ellen ranch. During the years from 1918 until 1949, over five thousand patients were involuntarily sterilized here.

The Home has undergone three name changes as euphemisms go in and out of fashion: Sonoma State Home in 1909, Sonoma State Hospital in 1953, Sonoma Developmental Center in 1986.

Today, the Sonoma Developmental Center is administered by the California Department of Developmental Services and "provides services and support to children and adults with developmental disabilities [to include] mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism and related conditions."