[3] The entire Livermore Basin aquifer faces a concern over elevated total dissolved solids by the year 2020 due to an expanding human population leading to higher rates of return water flows to the aquifer containing certain salts.

Geologically, the Livermore Valley is a tectonically formed pull-apart basin, which has been infilled with late Tertiary and Quaternary alluvial sediment.

[5] Livermore Valley was named after Robert Livermore, an immigrant American rancher in Mexican Alta California, who with his business partner José Noriega were keeping livestock in the valley since 1834.

Livermore and Jose Noriega received the Mexican land grant for Rancho Las Positas, which encompassed the valley, in 1839 from Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado.

Livermore's name became well known during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s−early 1850s, for an inn at his adobe ranch house in the valley that served miners and other travelers eastbound on the road from the Bay Area through the Diablo Range's passes to the Mother Lode region in the Sierra Nevada.