Dixon: The Town Named by Mistake

Dixon, California exists because of a misspelling. Around eighteen seventy a landowner named Thomas Dickson donated ten acres of his Solano County land to the California Pacific Railroad to secure a depot stop. The town was first called Dicksville, but when the first rail shipment arrived in eighteen seventy-two it was addressed to Dixon, and that name stuck, mainly for simplicity.

Thomas Dickson never got his name on the map correctly, but sheep and lambs gave the town an identity. Dixon became known as Lamb Town USA, a center of the California wool and lamb trade that endures in its annual May Fair, one of the oldest fairs in the state.