Like much of eastern Sacramento County, the lands that comprise Easton were once active gold fields. The Natomas Company mined the site for gold from the late 1800’s well into the next century—around 1960—using dredges that created long rows of rock mounds, called tailings, up to seventy feet high.

No longer suitable for agricultural production, the more than 12,000 acre site became the home of Aerojet-General Corporation (Aerojet). Now owned by GenCorp Inc., Aerojet continues as one of the nation’s leading aerospace and defense companies. More than 1,500 employees work at the Aerojet Sacramento campus.

Over the last fifty years, only a small part of the land has been actively used for Aerojet’s aerospace operations. Today, with advances in technology, the traditional amount of “buffer” land is no longer necessary, making much of the land—approximately 6,000 acres—available for the creation of Easton.