“I guess Rancho Cordova has rebounded after the loss a little but it almost went to a ghost town for a while.”
The closing of Beale impacted many smaller/medium cities, miles away from Beale.
My funniest and most memorable story about Beale happened at the N. California Ocean coast.
My sons and I were Coastal deer hunting and my older son and I had crossed a little creek, and my youngest son was in the middle of the creek when a plane broke the sound barrier as it left coastal Cali heading west.
The youngest son actually ducked so low he ended up in the creek over the top of his boots and got very wet and cold.
The oldest son saw the plane and called it as a SR71.
Our youngest son can laugh decades later.
I went to one of the actual air shows at Beale they had and the SR was there for the public to see at a distance. They took it off to go to Minot and did a low level fly over at a couple of hundred feet at low speeds with the gear down trying not to stall the thing. There was a gas can about 10 yards away from us when the thing went over and the can was vibrating on the ground and circling. Used to be fun to watch the things take off at night with the cone flames on the engines and we could feel the power of the takeoff in housing. My Lord they are powerful.
wy69