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From the Archives: How Bodega Head Almost Ended Up with a Nuclear Power Plant

February 2024

By James Daly

THE HOLE IN THE HEAD, 1963: In October 1964, the Atomic Energy Commission released a report that declared Bodega Head was “not a suitable location for the proposed nuclear power plant.” PG&E canceled plans for the plant. (photo courtesy Sonoma County Museum)

This article was originally published in Sonoma Magazine in 2015.

Like so many birthplaces, Bodega Head was the scene of enormous excitement and hope. It also saw jangled nerves, uncertainty and some very sharp pain. Ultimately, the place was a source of great joy and a deep optimism.

Bodega Head was not the delivery room for a squalling infant, but a bare coastal ridge typically inhabited by more shorebirds than people. Fifty years ago, this granite rise on the outskirts of the small fishing village of Bodega Bay gave birth to an environmental movement that eventually protected the rugged beauty of the California coast. It would inform later anti-nuclear protests and inspire citizen activism for generations to come.

To this unlikely spot and this unlikely town came a colorful combination of grassroots environmental organizers — students, ranchers, dairymen, former communists, far-right libertarians, musicians, young parents, a local waitress and veterinarian, a marine biologist, and even an ornery woman who occasionally carried a shotgun — to join forces. They united in opposition when Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) decided to build a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head, atop the San Andreas Fault. In a contentious three-year battle that brought the plight of tiny Bodega Bay to the attention of the Kennedy administration, they fought in the halls of justice and actively debated in the court of public opinion. Ultimately, they prevailed, proving that common people with uncommon vision and hard work can indeed change society.

Power to the people

The nuclear age entered the public consciousness with full fury on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. On that day, in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the world learned what concentrated nuclear power could do. In a single sharp flash, a nuclear bomb dropped from an American B-29 bomber leveled the city, flattening buildings and vaporizing citizens. Three days later, another bomb fell on Nagasaki. Within a week, Japan surrendered. It was a savage end to a brutal war, and it was also the start of a terrifying new chapter in advanced weaponry. In the next few years, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union would engage in a frantic arms race, building increasingly more powerful atomic weapons, some with the power of millions of tons of TNT.

By 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower wanted to counter “the fearful atomic dilemma” and the scorched-earth reputation of
nuclear energy. In an address to the United Nations, Eisenhower proposed an Atoms-for-Peace Program, designed to quell rising fears of World War III and show how uranium in nuclear reactors could serve as a powerful national energy source. A year later, construction began on the nation’s first nuclear power plant, located in western Pennsylvania near the Ohio border. Eisenhower remotely initiated the first scoop of dirt at the groundbreaking ceremony, and the nuclear age was on.

The West Coast soon followed with its own nuclear facilities. A small experimental reactor went live in Ventura County in April 1957 and a few months later, the Vallecitos Nuclear Power Plant near Pleasanton came online. The Vallecitos project, a joint effort between General Electric and PG&E, was the first privately owned and operated nuclear power plant to deliver significant quantities of electricity for public use. A newsreel at the time boasted that the nuclear-based plant was “one of many that will dot the nation in the near future.”

Those expansion plans soon reached the Sonoma coast. At the start of the 1950s, the 947 acres of Bodega Head were divided among three property owners. The Head was then, as it is now, a stunning piece of land. Some was used for cattle grazing, but most remained as nature intended: sweeping hills of sand, dune grass, jagged cliffs. Miwok Indians first occupied the area, drawn by its abundant sea life and freshwater springs. Later, Russian colonists lived nearby, using the harbor as a base while they hunted the coast for otters, sea lions and seals.

Bodega Head is also alive with birds. It’s part of the Pacific Flyway — a major north-south migratory route that extends from Alaska to Patagonia — and more than 150 bird species have been spotted there. Egrets, herons, hawks and pelicans are common, but a binocular-wielding birder might also see endangered species such as the snowy plover, black oystercatcher and long-billed curlew.

PG&E saw another potential for Bodega Head. The years following the Great Depression were a time of enormous growth in California. Between 1940 and 1946, the population in PG&E’s service area — an enormous stretch of land between, roughly, Bakersfield in the south and Eureka — rose 40 percent. Following World War II, the boom continued. In 1946 alone, 1,200 industries in PG&E’s service area announced plans for new or expanded facilities. PG&E needed to generate more power to serve its customers.

In May 1958, the company acquired property on Bodega Head, revealing plans to build a “steam-electric generating plant” there. Bodega Head was less than 70 miles north of one of the energy giant’s hungriest clients: hundreds of thousands of customers in the burgeoning San Francisco Bay area. The granite ridge of the Head would provide a solid foundation and there was plenty of natural water that could be used as a coolant — Bodega Harbor on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other.

Locals were flabbergasted. Just three years earlier, the National Park Service recommended that Bodega Head be preserved for its natural beauty. In 1956, the state legislature approved funds to purchase the land and make it a state beach and park. The University of California was interested in building a marine laboratory there. But all those plans swiftly disappeared. The state parks agency said it was no longer interested in the site and the UC system did the same.

EARLY OPPOSITION: Rose Gaffney turned down PG&E when the company approached her about buying 408 acres she owned near the plant site. (photo courtesy Sonoma County Museum) — EARLY OPPOSITION: Rose Gaffney turned down PG&E when the company approached her about buying 408 acres she owned near the plant site. (Courtesy of Sonoma County Museum)

PG&E needed more space for its sprawling site, and approached Rose Gaffney about buying her land. Gaffney, a craggy-faced woman who sometimes brandished a shotgun on her ranch to turn away intruders, was interested in selling, but not to the power company. She wanted her 408-acre property to go to the state or the university system. She declined PG&E’s offer. Gaffney later told the Petaluma Argus-Courier that even at that early day, a PG&E official confided to her that the company planned to build a nuclear plant there, “but they didn’t want the public to know yet.”

It pushed on, wooing local politicos. County officials saw the plant as a way to increase tax revenue. Fishermen, however, began to grumble, concerned about soaring water temperatures and construction runoff that might silt up the narrow harbor entrance near Campbell Cove, where the plant was to be sited. There were also aesthetic concerns about the steel towers that would be built through what is now Doran Regional Park to carry the power lines, as well as fears that a planned road to the industrial development would harm wildlife on the shoreline.

But there was more than that. Bodega Bay is a natural harbor created by movement along the San Andreas Fault. The fault extends more than 800 miles through western California, forming the tectonic boundary between the Pacific plate and the North American plate. It runs parallel to the coast and crosses Bodega Bay. The narrow ridge of Bodega Head sits on the Pacific plate, while the town itself is on the North American plate. When the fault shifts, it can do so violently. During the 1906 earthquake, nearby land moved as much as 15 feet; tremors are frequent. As early as 1958, Joel Hedgpeth, the head of the University of Pacific Marine Station at Dillon Beach, began raising questions about earthquake safety and the health of marine wildlife.

Going nuclear

In 1961, finally, PG&E revealed that the proposed plant would be a 340-megawatt nuclear power plant. The state Public Utilities Commission OK’d the permit, subject to approval from the federal Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). PG&E was so confident of future permitting that it began to ready the site, including digging what was designed to be a 90-foot by 120-foot hole to house the reactor. Critics would soon give the giant pit a wry nickname: The Hole in the Head. The Atomic Park, as it was to be called, would be a showpiece. “This was back in the day when nuclear was a wild dream,” said David Pesonen, who would come to lead the movement to foil PG&E’s plans. “They were telling us that one day we could put a pill-sized piece of uranium in your car tank and drive to the moon and back.”

Karl Kortum, founder and director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, was among the earliest and most vocal opponents of the project. (photo courtesy Sonoma County Museum) — Karl Kortum, founder and director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, was among the earliest and most vocal opponents of the project. (Courtesy of Sonoma County Museum)

Locals were despondent about the pace of the development and PG&E’s seemingly unfettered race to completion. The town of Bodega Bay, famous as a filming location for Alfred Hitchcock’s horror movie “The Birds,” became the site of something much more consequential. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Harold Gilliam wrote an article lamenting the loss of the coastal beauty of Bodega Bay. Karl Kortum, founder and director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, wrote a letter to the Chronicle encouraging citizens to write PG&E and oppose the plan. Hundreds did, but PG&E didn’t waver. A nuclear power plant on Bodega Head seemed certain.

But Gilliam’s piece attracted the attention of Pesonen, a junior staff member with the Sierra Club whose life was about to take a dramatic turn. Sent by Sierra Club president David Brower to investigate PG&E’s plans, Pesonen came back a changed man.

“I had a feeling of the enormousness of what we were fighting; it was anti-life,” he said. He recalled a drive he took to the site one day, through a beautiful countryside filled with chicken farms and eucalyptus windbreaks. An accident at the site could make all this land uninhabitable.

“I had an epiphany,” he said. “I began to think that there really was evil in the world. PG&E had a single-mindedness that didn’t involve people’s well-being.”

Suddenly, the fight was a moral issue.

Pesonen left the Sierra Club and in 1962 helped form the Northern California Association to Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor. He was articulate and had a sense of strategy. He quickly became the leader.

TAKING UP THE CAUSE: Hazel Bonnecke Mitchell, above, a waitress at the Tides Wharf Restaurant in Bodega Bay, led the petition-signing campaign against the proposed PG&E plant on Bodega Head. (photo courtesy Sonoma County Museum) — TAKING UP THE CAUSE: Hazel Bonnecke Mitchell, a waitress at the Tides Wharf Restaurant in Bodega Bay, led the petition-signing campaign against the proposed PG&E plant on Bodega Head. (Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Museum)

Pesonen reasoned that the group’s members must find an alternative to battling PG&E through the regulatory process, where they was losing. First, they would fight the project in the court of public opinion. During the 1950s and early 1960s, persistent political protests were rare, but the group tirelessly organized rallies, marched with sandwich boards and wrote letters to state officials. Hazel Bonnecke (later Mitchell) spearheaded a petition-signing campaign. Jean Kortum, Karl’s wife, organized sign-carrying demonstrations at PG&E headquarters in San Francisco.

Bonnecke, a waitress at the Tides Wharf Restaurant in Bodega Bay who often served PG&E officials lunch, was said to have tipped off The Press Democrat to PG&E’s nuclear intentions in 1958, although she never acknowledged that role. Hedgpeth’s secretary also was mentioned as the possible whistleblower.

“If not for a few key people, none of this may have happened,” said Doris Sloan, a young mother then, who was a key member in the campaign.

Publicity stunts were fair game. On Memorial Day 1963, organizers released 1,500 helium-filled balloons from Bodega Head. The balloons represented radioactive isotopes, and their random flight dramatized to local dairy farmers how far airborne contamination from the PG&E site could drift, then enter their grass and make its way into the milk. Each had a note attached: “This balloon could represent a radioactive molecule of Strontium 90 or Iodine 131. Tell your local newspaper where you found this balloon.” The balloons descended in San Rafael and Fairfield, and also drifted into the East Bay. Some were found in the Central Valley, more than 100 miles away.

Music became a key part of the protest, Sloan recalled, and the campaign was enlivened with many songs ranging from Dixieland jazz to blues to jug-band music. Celebrated trumpeter Lu Watters came out of retirement to record the “Blues Over Bodega” album, while the Goodtime Washboard Three’s song, “Don’t Blame PG&E, Pal,” even concluded with a menacing explosion.

The group’s trump card, Pesonen believed, was in raising ominous concerns about the reactor’s location on an active fault line.

“PG&E said that if there was any threat to public safety, they would not build it,” Pesonen said. “What tripped up PG&E was the geology of the place.”

PG&E claimed that innovative engineering techniques would eliminate damage to the reactor building in the event of an earthquake. Pesonen and others were skeptical and brought in Pierre Saint-Amand, a respected geologist who prepared the definitive reports on the catastrophic Chilean earthquake of 1960.

“It was a rainy day, the gates were open and there was no construction going on,” Sloan recalled. “The guard wasn’t in the kiosk, so we walked in. Pierre found the fault that runs right through the reactor pit.”

He spent another two days exploring the land nearby. His 46-page report, issued in summer 1963, was devastating. Saint-Amand noted that the site was not the island of granite PG&E had claimed it to be, but a more geologically fractured site. “A worse foundation condition would be difficult to envision,” he wrote. The report drew the attention of Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who assigned his own investigators to look further into the proposal.

PG&E still maintained that the site was safe and the AEC continued to mull the application, but by October 1963, construction on the reactor pit was halted. In March 1964, southern Alaska was hit with an 8.6 earthquake, the largest recorded in North America. The four-minute temblor buckled streets, liquefied soil, reshaped the shoreline and caused tsunamis. Opponents of the Bodega Head plant pointed to the headlines: Could the same thing happen here? If so, how would a nuclear plant located directly on the fault line fare?

Finally, in October 1964, the AEC released its report on the proposed plant. While noting that PG&E had tried to engineer suitable protection in reactor containment structure in the event of a quake, those “pioneering” designs were unproved and untested. It concluded that “Bodega Head is not a suitable location for the proposed nuclear power plant.” On Oct. 30, 1964, PG&E president Robert Gerdes withdrew its application and canceled plans for the plant.

Miraculously, and against all odds, the protesters had won.

Many of the key figures who represented PG&E in Bodega Bay have died. But at the time, they repeatedly and unequivocally dismissed the protesters’ concerns. PG&E spokesman Hal Stroube, in a May 1963 interview with San Francisco television station KPIX, said the activists’ fears about radiation release were “completely incorrect.” He compared the amount of radiation emanating from the plant on a typical day to be the equivalent of what a family would receive while watching television in their living room. As to concerns about the location’s seismic vulnerability on the San Andreas Fault: “We would simply overdesign the plant,” Stroube countered. “We have built 76 plants (in California) … and every one of those is built with earthquake possibilities uppermost in mind. We have to keep these plants running in the event of an earthquake or any other civil commotion.”

A half-century later, PG&E remains philosophical about its defeat. “PG&E’s decision to withdraw from the project is demonstrative of our No. 1 priority, and that is to always put safety first,” said Blair Jones, a PG&E spokesman based in San Luis Obispo. “Our decision to not pursue it does not in any way reduce the overall benefits that nuclear-generated power continues to provide to our customers and other utility customers around the nation. Nuclear power is a significant supplier of clean energy to Americans.”

A turning point for many lives

When the site was abandoned, the reactor pit had been dug more than 70 feet deep. It has since filled with water, replenished by the natural springs that drew Miwoks to this location thousands of years ago. Today, the Bodega Head power plant site is a serene pond, lined with reeds and filled with noisy birds. There’s little to remind a casual visitor of what almost arose here.

On Oct. 30, 2014, the 50th anniversary of PG&E withdrawing its plans, the remaining veterans of the Bodega Head fight gathered for a luncheon at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel in Santa Rosa to again celebrate their victory. While their frames are stooped and their hair is gray, their spirit remains young. They’re still witty and warm and are keen to talk about political issues. And they still dislike PG&E.

The room was filled with laughter and love. Many said the fight to save Bodega Head changed the direction of their lives. Sloan, for instance, went on to help establish an environmental studies program at UC Berkeley, and was involved in many local environmental movements, including Save The Bay, which works to protect and restore San Francisco Bay. Bill Kortum, brother of Karl, was just starting his veterinary practice when he joined the campaign. It led to a lifetime of environmental activism, including helping to establish the California Coastal Commission. Jean Kortum, Karl’s wife, played a key part of the 1960s Freeway Revolt that halted the construction of major highways through San Francisco. The projects were wildly supported by the city’s politicians and labor leaders, but were defeated by citizen opponents.

“This kind of fight got into our DNA,” said Julie Shearer, then a young reporter for the Mill Valley Record who was married to Pesonen during the Bodega Head fight. “It made us all more alert, more responsive and more active for the rest of our lives.”

Pesonen agreed. “It was the turning point in my life,” he said. Pesonen later attended law school at UC Berkeley and was active in the anti-nuke movement, leading the Sierra Club’s opposition to PG&E’s ill-fated nuclear power project at Point Arena. He later became director of the California Department of Forestry in the late 1970s and was also a superior court judge.

These environmental elders, as they’re called, made an important statement: Economic growth and technology must not trump respect for the land. Their unlikely victory was a revelation and an inspiration to many. In the late 1960s, similar citizen opposition grew in Southern California near Malibu, where the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had proposed to build a nuclear power plant in rugged Corral Canyon. Following a string of activist protests and actions, the Malibu plant project was dropped in 1970.

“People saw that they could speak up, take on major institutions and win,” Bill Kortum said in October. Ultimately, the action of a few tireless crusaders launched an environmental preservation campaign that continues today. The movement “grew because we were persistent,” Pesonen said.

But just as importantly, he noted: “It grew because we were right.”

College Sweethearts Surrounded by Love at Sunny Wedding in Sonoma

February 2024

By Abigail Peterson

Chris Sarli and Aramis Alvarez at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma. (Debbie Labrot, Lily Rose Photography)

In matching navy tuxes, Chris Sarli and Aramis Alvarez stood in front of family and friends on a sunny May day to share their love. It was the first time a few of their family members had met, but the mood was joyful and relaxed. “I thought I was going to be anxious,” remembers Chris. “But it was pretty easy for us; I was invested in the moment.”

His husband Aramis agrees. “And then the ceremony came, and that’s when your heart beats the fastest. That’s when a lot of the tears were flowing.”

At Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma. (Debbie Labrot, Lily Rose Photography)

Flowe arrangement at Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma. (Debbie Labrot, Lily Rose Photography)

The couple, both hardware engineers at Apple (Aramis works on the iPhone and Chris on virtual reality headsets), first met as electrical engineering students at the University of Florida. For their loved ones, especially their young nieces and nephews, they wanted their wedding to be emblematic of the knowledge that love is love.

“This was the first gay wedding that we’ve ever been to—our own wedding. We wanted it to be a really memorable event,” explains Chris.

The couple chose music from a classical cellist and violinist and served a beautiful meal of halibut and rack of lamb, plus a gelato bar with Port and other dessert wines—Aramis’s special request. To bring in elements of pride, the couple wore bow ties and socks with subtle patterns of rainbows and hearts, then cut into an elaborate rainbow cake for dessert as their friends whooped and cheered.

“Sometimes it still feels like a blur, because there’s so much emotion, in a good way,” says Aramis. The couple left for a honeymoon in Bora Bora the very next day. “It was ‘Wedding. Boom. Honeymoon.’ We wanted to keep it on that high.”

Resources

Planner: Katrina Reed, Bravo Weddings & Events

Photographer: Lily Rose Photography

Location and wine: Jacuzzi Family Vineyards

Catering: Park Avenue Catering

Floral designer: Succulents SF

Cake: Jill Habansky, Sweet Cake Sonoma

Music: AMS Entertainment

Custom tuxedos: Indochino

From the Archives: The Battle to Save Apples in Wine Country

February 2024

By Danny Mueller

Apple trees blossom in an orchard along Bodega Highway, at Spring Hill School Road, west of Sebastopol on Monday, March 31, 2014. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)

This article was originally published in 2018. Manzana Products, Sonoma County’s last apple processing plant, announced in February 2024 that it is moving to Washington state.

Paula Shatkin and her husband were driving along Sonoma County’s scenic back roads when she first noticed something was amiss.

“We saw apple orchards in bloom just being chopped down, willy-nilly, everywhere,” said Shatkin.

That was 18 years ago, right when vineyards were booming and apple farmers were having trouble making ends meet. The iconic Gravenstein had transformed west Sonoma County into one of the world’s premier apple growing regions. In the booming 1940s, nearly 15,000 acres in the county were planted with apple trees. By 2016, that number had fallen to about 2,200 acres.

“Whole orchards were being chopped down and made into vineyards, without a lot of work being done to make sure they weren’t damaging the ecosystem,” said Shatkin. “We were losing our biodiversity.”

Shatkin, a social worker, took action. She rallied local growers, preservationists and environmental advocates to create a local chapter of the Slow Food movement, an international effort to preserve local cuisines and promote biodiversity. “Save the Gravenstein” became a popular rallying cry on bumper stickers and store windows in west Sonoma County.

“We decided to try to do something about the Gravenstein apple,” said Shatkin. “Because that’s the iconic apple. But we grow 50-plus varieties of apples up here. So there’s no working to save the Gravenstein without working to save all the apples, because no farmer can make a living on just the one apple.”

Her theory held that informed consumers would be willing to pay more for Gravensteins and other local apple varieties than supermarket standards like Jonathan and Red Delicious. Farmers growing local, organic apples could see higher margins on fresh fruit sales.

Festival goers of all ages, Saturday August 13, 2011 enjoyed the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat) 2011 — Every August, festivalgoers of all ages enjoy the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol. (Photo by Kent Porter)

Shatkin’s Slow Food Russian River was soon on a mission to get more people excited about local apples. Shops in Sebastopol were handing out free, locally grown apples. Banners in town announced “The Gravensteins Are Coming” in July and “The Gravensteins Are Here” in August. The group acquired an apple press and invited residents to press juice at the Luther Burbank farm in Sebastopol.

“We have made a huge difference in the demand for Gravensteins at this point, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still losing apple acreage to vines, unfortunately,” said Shatkin. “But all these years one of our goals has been to help farmers raise the price-point of the apples so that they could maybe make a living growing apples.”

Gold Ridge Organic Farms owner Brooke Hazen focuses on antique heirloom apples like Hoople’s Antique Gold, Red Gravensteins, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Ashmeads Kernel and Cox Orange Pippin along with many more on the Sebastopol property. Photo taken Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat) — Gold Ridge Organic Farms owner Brooke Hazen focuses on antique heirloom apples like Hoople’s Antique Gold, Red Gravensteins, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Ashmeads Kernel and Cox Orange Pippin on his Sebastopol property. (John Burgess/The Press Democrat)

Gravenstein apple production was valued at $1.6 million in 2016, an increase of some $480,000 from the previous year. The value of all apples in Sonoma County? Roughly $5.47 million. Most of that money came from processed fruit, rather than fresh apple sales.

That’s small change compared to the behemoth $586.52 million worth of winegrapes grown in Sonoma County in 2016. (Crop totals for 2017 won’t be published until July.)

Sonoma County’s orchards covered about 2,193 acres of land in 2016, a figure that’s remained relatively steady as wine acreage has exploded. Winegrapes now cover more than 60,000 acres.

But wine production isn’t the only source of frustration for apple farmers. Sonoma County’s cost of living is steadily on the rise. As fire rebuilding efforts continue, manual labor is in short supply. And Washington State farmers are taking an ever larger piece of the West Coast organic apple market.

Yet, new hope for Sonoma County’s historic orchards may have arrived. It comes in the form of another alcoholic beverage.

Jolie Devoto is the founder and owner of Golden State Cider. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat) — Jolie Devoto is the founder and owner of Golden State Cider. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)

Cider as savior?

The Gravenstein, derived from Europe and named after a Danish castle, transformed west Sonoma County into one of the world’s premier apple growing regions. Its namesake highway (CA-116) now runs through what remains of Sonoma’s apple country, north of Sebastopol.

In recent years, however, this area has quietly become a destination for cider lovers, with some 10 cideries and a growing numbers of taprooms.

Jolie Devoto-Wade is a second-generation apple farmer. Her parents moved to Sebastopol from Berkeley in 1976 to get back to the land, planting some 50 heirloom varieties of apple and countless flowers. Today, Devoto-Wade runs the cider-making arm of the family business, Devoto Orchards, and sister brand Golden State Cider.

In 2012, she and her husband, Hunter, released the family’s first farmhouse cider. A “Save the Gravenstein” cider soon followed. Lately, the family has been selling craft cider in cans as Golden State Cider. Devoto-Wade sees the company’s purchasing power as an opportunity to help local farmers.

A bottle of 1976, left, and Save the Gravenstein by Devoto Orchard's Estate Cider in Sebastopol, on Tuesday, July 21, 2015 .(BETH SCHLANKER/ The Press Democrat) — A bottle of 1976, left, and Save the Gravenstein by Devoto Orchard’s Estate Cider in Sebastopol. (Beth Schlanker/The Press Democrat)

“Honestly, I think craft cider is key for supporting local apple farmers and keeping the Gravenstein going,” said Devoto-Wade.

She says the family has plans to open a cider tasting room in The Barlow, a trendy outdoor market in Sebastopol. A fitting location, as The Barlow’s first structures housed an applesauce canning facility in the late 1930s.

Carmen Snyder, executive director at Sonoma County Farm Trails, also sees hope for local apple farmers in the sourcing-obsessed craft cider industry.

“That’s certainly a way people can make a living off of the apples, which means that the acreage can stay in apples,” said Snyder. “I’ve also heard of farmers planting apple trees again because there’s this market…there are so many local cider companies that want to source from Sonoma County instead of just the Pacific Northwest and beyond.”

Gravenstein apples on one of the 70-year-old apple trees at Horse and Plow winery in Sebastopol, California on Wednesday, July 27, 2016. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat) — Gravenstein apples on one of the 70-year-old apple trees at Horse and Plow winery in Sebastopol. (Alvin Jornada/The Press Democrat)

Processing and pricing

Even as craft cider hits its stride, the future of local apple processing remains uncertain.

Manzana Products has been producing apple sauce, apple juice and apple cider vinegar in Sebastopol for the last 90 years. Today, it is the last apple-processing facility in a region once dotted with them. Railroad lines that sped tons of crisp, local apples to a hungry San Francisco market in the ’40s and ‘50s are largely gone.

“There used to be more processors,” said Shatkin. “During World War II, local apples were dried and sent to the front to feed soldiers. That was one thing that kept the industry big.”

It’s a lonely position for Manzana. But the company sees a path forward that would help small farmers and keep the region’s last apple processing plant in operation.

Manzana outlines a plan of action that involves meeting with “each grower,” simplifying prices for processing and communicating annual prices to farmers further in advance. The historic cannery is even offering to help apple farmers consider new options for economic stability, like channeling a percentage of their crop to the fresh market.

Shatkin says efforts from Slow Food Russian River have largely succeeded in helping farmers make more money from growing local, organic apples. “Value has increased,” she said. “The return per acre has increased.”

Local farmers, cidermakers, preservationists, environmentalists and chefs have found a true local heirloom in the Gravenstein, a living fruit that captures a distinct sense of place and history. Shatkin says the “uphill” battle to preserve the Gravenstein will continue.

“The way to get people to take you seriously is to never disappear,” Shatkin said. “So over the years, people started taking me seriously.”

Learn more about Sonoma County’s apple heritage in this video from Northern California Public Media:

Sonoma Artist, Featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sparks Conversations About Race and Racism

February 2024

By John Beck

Rose Hill of Rose Hill Art in Sonoma. (John Burgess/for Sonoma Magazine)

Artist Rose Hill uses targeted examples of historically racist Black imagery to spark conversation and start the healing process.

“I think the universe picked me, as a Black woman, to express art this way,” Hill says. “Because a space needs to be made for this. It’s a part of our history. And it can be done in a palatable way. And the only way I think it would be accepted is if it was a Black artist doing it. Because Black folks will never trust anyone else to do it.”

The Rose Hill Art Gallery, located near Sonoma on Fremont Drive in Schellville, pops with color, whether it’s the bright, playful figures in Hill’s “Little Colored Girls” ceramic plate series, made famous by Oprah Winfrey, or the clever use of fabric in her “Spooks” series of ancestor portraits. Her sensitive pieces work to ensure we never forget a time when images of intolerance and pain for Black Americans were commonplace—and challenges viewers to look at themselves in the mirror, both literally and figuratively, and learn from what they see.

Rose Hill of Rose Hill Art in Sonoma, November 15, 2023. (Photo John Burgess/The Press Democrat) — Rose Hill of Rose Hill Art in Sonoma. (John Burgess/For Sonoma Magazine)

Rose Hill’s homage to her mother, mixed-media on slate, in her studio on Fremont Drive in Sonoma on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022. (Robbi Pengelly/Index-Tribune) — Rose Hill’s homage to her mother, mixed-media on slate, in her studio on Fremont Drive in Sonoma. (Robbi Pengelly/Sonoma Index-Tribune)

Moment of inspiration

When I first started, it was with magic markers on paper plates. I would paint the whole thing with magic markers. I’d draw women with head rags and all kinds of faces. Everywhere I went, I had my bag with blank paper plates. At outdoor festivals, I would have them with me, and people would say, “Can I have it?” And I started signing them and acting like they were something. And then I thought, I’m gonna get me a kiln and really make some plates. And that’s what I started doing.

The Oprah experience

My sister Maxine Jones and her band En Vogue were on the ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ several times. One time, Maxine took her a teacup I made as a gift, and Oprah fell in love. Then Gayle [King] called and commissioned me to do a dinner service for 12 people. It was so overwhelming, because I wasn’t even good at what I was doing yet. I could paint, but I was just teaching myself how to fire and glaze. After I was on her show in 1999, around 5 million people came to my website, and I got physically ill. I tried to block it out. It was wild.

Learning from bigotry

We all have baggage associated with this imagery. We’re Americans. What we choose to do with that is something else. Because we all have to work through whatever we have to work through. But I think what I’m doing is medicine. We are supposed to talk to each other. That’s how we heal, by talking about things. If it goes away completely, we won’t talk about this stuff.

Rose Hill Art Studio, 75 Fremont Drive, Sonoma, rosehillart.com

Local Women Share What Black Joy Means to Them

February 2024

By Chelsea Kurnick & Cash Martinez

This article was originally published in 2021.

More than 60 years ago, Malcolm X observed, “The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

In today’s media landscape, Black women continue to be overlooked or poorly depicted.

Despite playing a major role in the movement for social justice and equality, Black women are often excluded from public conversations surrounding racism and sexism, according to a recent study by the American Psychological Association. And pervasive negative stereotypes in fictional representations have real-life consequences for Black women and girls, who report feeling saddened and disrespected by these portrayals, found Essence Magazine’s Images study. Meanwhile, many of the nuanced, positive and powerful stories of Black women are left out in the mainstream of popular culture.

This article seeks to amplify the diverse stories of Black women.

Over the past months, we interviewed 13 remarkable Black women living in Sonoma County. They spoke to us about the healing power of art and activism, and more specifically, Black joy.

“Joy is such a special concept to think about when doing activist work as a Black person, specifically as a Black woman,” said Ashley Simon, an administrative coordinator at Sonoma State’s Center for Community Engagement. “I think there is this idea that people who engage on this level are just angry. It’s true; I am. But I am also so much more … Black joy to me is deeply political because nothing would make me more joyous than seeing my people be free.”

Kleaver Cruz, founder of the Black Joy Project, says that amplifying Black joy is not about dismissing or creating an ‘alternative’ Black narrative that ignores the realities of collective pain. Cruz told Vogue UK, “It is about holding the pain and injustices we experience in tension with the joy we experience in pain’s midst. It’s about using that joy as an entry into understanding the oppressive forces we navigate through (and) as a means to imagine and create a world free of them.”

In this article, we present 13 distinct perspectives on Black joy, as told to us by the women we interviewed. Click on their images to read what Black joy means to them and how they celebrate it. Some interview answers have been edited for clarity.

Interviews and cover design by Chelsea Kurnick and Cash Martinez.

Popular ‘Pigs and Pinot’ Returns to Healdsburg with Top Chefs and Winemakers

February 2024

By Heather Irwin

Chef Charlie Palmer finishes plates of Bucher pinot noir pork shoulder during Pigs and Pinot at Hotel Healdsburg, in Healdsburg, California, on Friday, March 16, 2018. (Alvin Jornada/The Press Democrat)

Unless you’ve been invited to one of Guy Fieri’s birthday parties (and I’m still waiting for my Evite), you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more expansive gathering of chefs and winemakers than Pigs & Pinot in Healdsburg.

The annual event, which will be held March 15-16, is now in its 17th year.

It is centered around the Taste of Pigs and Pinot, a sampling of over 60 wines (mostly pinot noir) and pairings from Dry Creek Kitchen, guest celebrity chefs including Nancy Oakes of Boulevard in SF, Neal Fraser of LA’s Redbird, Bryan Voltaggio of Maryland’s Thacher & Rye along with local Healdsburg restaurants, including Molti Amici, Spoonbar and Valette.

But that’s just the start. The weekend extravaganza also includes a whole pig Iron Chef-style competition at The Matheson, with guest chefs preparing dishes for a pork-loving panel of judges. There’s also the Ultimate Pinot Smackdown, with four Master Sommeliers pitting 16 pinot noirs against each other.

Two gala dinners will be held at Dry Creek Kitchen and The Matheson but are reserved for guests who purchase Hotel Healdsburg packages that include two nights at the Healdsburg Hotel for a cool $6,500.

The event benefits various culinary and wine scholarships, including scholarships to The Culinary Institute of America, Sonoma State Wine Program, Court of Sommelier Level 1 and Odyssey Wine Academy, as well as the Healdsburg and Luther Burbank Centers for the Arts, and several other local educational and arts programs.

For more details about the event and ticket sales, go to pigsandpinot.com.

From the Archives: Memories of Christo’s Running Fence

February 2024

By Glen Martin

PC: The Running Fence follows the contours of the land as it rises to cross a ridge. Photo must be credited to Wolfgang Volz, copyright Christo 1976. From a large-format color transparency lent by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. 8/26/2001: 13-B: The Running Fence follows the contours of the land as it rises to cross a ridge.

This article was originally published in 2016, 40 years after the installation of “Running Fence.” Christo, who made monumental art around the world, died at 84 on May 31, 2020. Jeanne-Claude, his artistic and life partner, died at 74 on Nov. 18, 2009.

The hamlet of Valley Ford hasn’t changed much in the last four decades. There’s more traffic, of course: It’s located on scenic Highway 1, and Bodega Bay is just 8 miles to the west. But Dinucci’s Italian Dinners is still there, serving the family-style meals that made its initial reputation more than a century ago.

Local ranchers still come to the Valley Ford Market for coffee and the latest talk on lamb prices and government regulation. And the land itself seems immutable: The rolling pastures broken by eucalyptus windbreaks — speckled with fat sheep and sleek cattle — present a prospect as timeless as the nearby Pacific Ocean.

But something happened here 40 years ago that changed everything. A discreet monument marking that event stands at the Valley Ford post office, a single, corroded metal pole 18 feet high, with a small commemorative plaque at its base. It was at this spot that “Running Fence” came through, completed on Sept. 10, 1976.

If you saw the fence then, you can stand next to the pole now, close your eyes and see it again, with almost shocking clarity. You can understand now that it meant much more than you thought it did at the time of its installation.

Joe Pozzi remembers when a slight-framed man with long hair, massive horn-rimmed glasses and craggy features came to his family’s ranch near Estero de San Antonio. It was in 1972, and Pozzi and his siblings were engaged in the quotidian duty required of anyone involved in a dairy operation: milking the cows.

“We were in the barn and we saw Dad outside talking to this guy,” recalled Pozzi, then a pre-teen. “And when Dad came into the barn, we asked him what was going on, and he said, ‘Oh, some damn hippie wants to build a fence for us. I told him to come back later.’”

That “hippie” was Christo — Christo Vladimirov Javacheff — now hailed as the world’s foremost installation artist and one of the great creative visionaries of the past five decades. While it’s true that he came to the Pozzi ranch to build a fence, it wasn’t as an itinerant laborer hoping to make a few bucks stringing barbed wire.

“Christo was Bulgarian and his English wasn’t that great then, so Dad misunderstood him,” Pozzi said. “But Christo came back with his partner, Jeanne-Claude, and my mom brought out the bread, cheese and salami, like the west county Italian farmers always did when they had visitors. And Christo had this book with him, about something called the hanging curtain at Rifle Gap.”

Christo standing by a section of the Running Fence. (Photo by Morrie Camhi, renowned Sonoma County environmental portraitist)

jl0726_Collage — One of several collages Christo made in planning for the “Running Fence” project. (Courtesy of Christo)

Pastures well-worn with cow paths are bisected by the Running Fence as it crosses rural Sonoma County near Bloomfield. Color photo by John LeBaron — Pastures well-worn with cow paths are bisected by the Running Fence as it crosses rural Sonoma County near Bloomfield. (Photo by John LeBaron)

That was Rifle Gap, Colo., and “Valley Curtain” was a project that Christo and Jeanne-Claude had recently completed, a 200,200-square-foot swath of fabric draped across a steep mountain pass. As everyone ate the antipasti, the Pozzis politely listened to Christo’s proposal. He planned another project, this one for Sonoma and Marin counties, a fence of fabric running sinuously across the land from Highway 101 to the sea. It would be about 25 miles long and almost 20 feet high.

By the end of the visit, Pozzi said, his parents still weren’t completely clear on the concept, but they were sure of one thing: They liked Christo.

“He was incredibly charismatic,” Pozzi said, “but it was more than that. He was genuine. There was a warm human quality to him that you just felt. There was nothing slick or pretentious about him. Ranchers and farmers intuitively sense character in a person. He didn’t get the ‘Running Fence’ built because he sold anybody around here on the idea. They got behind him because they liked and trusted him.”

Christo returned to the Pozzi ranch several times over the next few months, and ultimately formed a deep bond with the family. At the same time, he visited other dairy farmers and ranchers who owned land along his proposed route for the fence. He ate at their tables and drank their wine.

Christo was in no hurry, Pozzi said, as he and Jeanne-Claude seemed to relish the human contact. It was evident they enjoyed immersing themselves in the west county’s agrarian culture.

“Everyone came to understand Christo was an artist, an important artist, and that the ‘Running Fence’ was a major art project,” Pozzi said. “But that wasn’t why he appealed to us. It was more that he shared similar qualities with the agricultural community. It’s something of a paradox. We’re independent, but we also rely on each other, we’re ready to help out at a moment’s notice. And we like to get things done, to conceive a project and then work hard to see it through. Christo had a project that he wanted to get done. He wasn’t going to step on anyone to do it, but it was important to him, and he asked for our help.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude ultimately enlisted 59 families whose properties fell within the proposed route of the fence. The ranchers and farmers weren’t merely acquiescent, however; they had become committed partisans for the project.

At the same time, news of the fence generated fierce push-back, primarily from environmentalists concerned about impacts on the land, and also from locals who were offended by promotion of the project as “art.” They formed the Committee to Stop the Running Fence, and vowed to send Christo fleeing from Sonoma.

The upshot of the discord was a seemingly endless series of meetings convened by the California Coastal Commission, the Marin County Planning Commission and the Sonoma County Planning Commission. The process was rancorous and dragged on for more than three years.

cc0330_Christo_LesBruhnVert — Christo listens to Valley Ford sheep rancher Lester Bruhn as they discuss the fence project, circa 1976. (Photo courtesy Mary Ann Bruhn)

cm0214_artists — At a gallery exhibit in 2000, Jeanne-Claude, left, and Christo talk with Ed Pozzi, a rancher who worked on the 24.5-mile project in 1976. The fence ran through some of Pozzi’s 1080 acres. (Photo courtesy Clay McLachlan)

“I remember at one point somebody declaring that the fence was ‘fascist art,’” said Brian Kahn, then a freshman Sonoma County supervisor who had been newly appointed to fill a vacancy. “I didn’t physically roll my eyes, but I rolled them internally. I was perplexed by the furor. The fence drew all these incredibly intense emotions that — from my perspective, at least — it didn’t warrant. Politics and art don’t mix well, and my bias has always been to let artists do what they want.

“But the fence came along just at a point when land-use policy was the primary matter of concern in the county, and it seemed to galvanize emotions on all sides of the issue. In a way I didn’t realize at the time, it focused people on the landscape and the impact our land-use policies would have on the future of the county.”

0GISWKOS — Running Fence crosses Highway 1 at Valley Ford. Just to the right of the fence, on the upper side of the street, is Valley Ford Market; on the lower side of the street, the post office is next to the fence. (Photo by John LeBaron)

But if opponents inveighed furiously against the project at the meetings, supporters — mainly ranchers and dairy farmers — spoke passionately in its favor. Christo seemed utterly serene. He spoke in defense of his art, and his disposition was always sunny; he never seemed worried, or even slightly anxious.

“He said on more than one occasion that the process, all the meetings, the environmental impact studies, were part of his art,” said Barbara Gonnella, owner of the Union Hotel in Occidental and Joe Pozzi’s sister. “And that was the absolute truth. If he hadn’t been able to build the fence in the end, I’m sure he would still have considered the project a success.”

Earlier this year, Gonnella hosted a screening of a film about “Running Fence” that was funded by the Smithsonian Museum of Modern Art. For Gonnella, the documentary had special resonance because it featured one of the last interviews with Jeanne-Claude before her death from a brain aneurysm in 2009.

At her Union Hotel Restaurant in Occidental, Barbara Gonnella wraps herself in one of the 2,050 panels of white nylon fabric Christo used in his art installation. (Photo by Alvin Jornada)

“By the 1990s, their work was a complete collaboration,” Gonnella said. “It was never just ‘Christo.’ It was always ‘Christo and Jeanne-Claude,’ and to me, that emphasized their connection with each other and humanity at large. Christo’s art is about more than just objects and materials, more about themes, even. It incorporates the landscape and the people on it, and the relationships he builds with those people.

“Our family is still in close contact with him. When our mother died, he was the first person to send flowers. When he’s in the area, he eats at the Union Hotel. My daughter just came back from visiting his latest installation (“The Floating Piers” on Lake Iseo, Italy). He’s still part of our lives. His work still affects us. He still affects us.”

Ultimately, of course, the fence went up. Scores of volunteers laid out the route, sank the posts, strung the cables, hung the fabric. Christo was right there among them, wearing an OSHA-required hard hat, blissfully shouldering his share of the grunt labor.

“I was 13 at the time,” Pozzi said, pointing out the path the fence took across the gentle hills south of Valley Ford, now empty save for grass undulating in the wind and myriad grazing sheep. “I think I was the youngest volunteer on the installation. It was an incredible experience, and then, two weeks after it went up (in 1976), we took it down. Two months later, you couldn’t tell it had been there. But my memory of it is still so vivid. It changed people’s lives, and for the better.”

jl0623_Fence_Helmet — Charmoon Richardson of Sebastopol worked on the “Running Fence” project and got his hard hat signed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. (Photo by Jeff Kan Lee)

Dave Steiner, a Sonoma Mountain grape-grower who was appointed to the Sonoma County Planning Commission shortly after the fence went up, said people shouldn’t confuse Christo’s melding of government processes into his art with reflexive acquiescence to official dictates.

“Great artists don’t yield to cultural or political pressures,” Steiner said. “They are naturally subversive, and Christo certainly was in that mold. When the Coastal Commission didn’t grant him a final permit to run his fence into the sea, he did it anyway. He used government to make a point in his work, but in the end, he was happy to defy government. That defiance was part of his work, too. And I think anybody who was around here at that time and had his or her head screwed on straight said, ‘Right on!’ when that happened. The fence was always supposed to run into the sea. The entire project would have been diminished if it had stopped at the shore.”

MA0912_CRISTOREUNION_474745 — Christo, right, and Jeanne-Claude at an event on September 12, 2009, in Bloomfield Park, celebrating the Running Fence art project. (Photo by Mark Aronoff)

After serving as a Sonoma County supervisor and the president of the California Fish and Game Commission, Brian Kahn moved to Montana. For a time, he directed the Montana Nature Conservancy. He now devotes himself to journalism, authoring books on environmental policy and field sports, and hosting “Home Ground,” a public-issues radio show broadcast across the intermountain West.

But he still gets back to Sonoma County with some regularity, and for the most part, he’s happy with what he sees.

“Through the mid-’70s, the county was focused on — actually divided by — a proposed general plan,” he said. “It was going to determine whether growth would be contained and orderly, or largely unregulated. The plan finally was adopted in 1978, and I’m convinced the fence was a major factor. It made people think about the land and their relationship to it. And when I drive around the county now, I see that the plan has pretty much held together.

“Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park may have merged more than was intended, but Sonoma Valley, the west county — those landscapes are largely intact, despite all the population pressures. It’s a wonderful thing to see. It’s a tremendous collective accomplishment.”

Indeed, the shift toward popular support of a general plan seemed to coincide with the completion of “Running Fence.” The project not only brought Sonoma County to the attention of the world, it also, somehow, brought the people of Sonoma County together.

“It was strange,” said Gonnella as she sat in the shadowed dining room of the Union Hotel following the lunchtime rush. “Once the fence started going up, once people could drive out and see this miraculous thing unfolding across the land, all the bitterness, all the protests, just kind of — stopped.”

She paused, looking out a window. Her eyes were moist, and when she spoke again, her voice was charged with emotion.

“I was only 17 then,” she said. “I loved living out in the west county. Everybody knew each other, most of the families were from the same region in northern Italy. But when the fence came, I got a sense of something bigger. The way it looked running across the hills, shimmering, changing colors in the light and the wind. I was so young, and it was so — so romantic. So incredibly romantic. I felt like my heart was going to burst.”

Selected Christo Installations

barrels_Visconti — (Photo by Jean-Dominique Lajoux)

1962 – “Oil Barrels”- Germany

Jeanne-Claude and Christo created a piece in response to the building of the Berlin Wall, blocking off the Rue Visconti in Paris with a wall of oil drums. They convinced police to allow the installation to remain for a few hours.

1972 – “Valley Curtain” – Colorado

An orange curtain made from 200,200 square feet of woven nylon fabric was stretched across Rifle Gap in the Rocky Mountains. An earlier attempt was shredded by wind and rock.

1976 – “Running Fence” – California

Running Fence-2WVolz — Photo by Wolfgang Volz)

1983 – “Surrounded Islands” – Florida

Eleven islands on Biscayne Bay were surrounded with 6.5 million square feet of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water and extending out from each island into the bay.

1991 – “The Umbrellas” – the U.S. and Japan

A temporary work realized in two countries at the same time, it was comprised of 3,100 opened umbrellas in Ibaraki (12 miles of them) and on Tejon Pass, along Highway 5, in Southern California (18 miles).

Umbrellas_Japan — (Photo by Wolfgang Volz)

2005 – “The Gates” – New York

More than 7,500 gates made of saffron-colored fabric panels were installed in New York City’s Central Park, a golden river appearing and disappearing through bare tree branches.

2016 – “The Floating Piers” – Italy

From June 18 to July 3, Lake Iseo in Lombardy was partially covered in 62 miles of shimmering yellow fabric, supported by a modular dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes floating on the surface of the water.

Shake Shack Is Finally Opening in Santa Rosa. Here’s What’s On the Menu

February 2024

By Heather Irwin

Shake Shack is coming to Montgomery Village. (Shake Shack)

After more than a year of anticipation, Shake Shack will open in Santa Rosa’s Montgomery Village on Thursday, Feb. 29. It’s the first Sonoma County location for the NYC-based burger and milkshake restaurant concept that rose to cult status for its elevated but simple take on fast food.

An East Coast rival to California’s In-N-Out, Shake Shack was founded in 2001 by NYC restaurateur Danny Meyer (who opened three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park).

Chicken sandwich at Shake Shack. (Shake Shack)

The Santa Rosa location is the first in Wine Country, though the Bay Area has 11 Shake Shacks, including one in Larkspur and three in San Francisco, along with Oakland, Sacramento, and South Bay locations.

“Our community has been buzzing about the impending opening since it was announced early last year,” said Brittany Mundarain, General Manager of Montgomery Village, in a press release. “We can’t wait to welcome everyone at this long-awaited grand opening.”

What’s on the menu

Shake Shack is best known for its signature ShackBurger, an Angus beef cheeseburger, along with its crinkle-cut fries and frozen custard shakes. Montgomery Village’s location will also serve the Golden State Double, a double patty, double cheese pileup with smoked garlic aioli only available in the Bay Area.

Other menu items include a vegetarian fried mushroom burger, griddled hot dog, and fried chicken sandwiches (including seasonal specials like the Korean-style fried chicken sandwich with sweet Gochujang glaze and kimchi). Shakes include gourmet-style flavors such as coffee-and-donuts, frozen hot cocoa, and maple Snickerdoodle. A secret menu reportedly includes a peanut butter and bacon burger.

Shake Shack will open at Santa Rosa's Montgomery Village in late 2023. Courtesy photo. — Shake Shack will open at Santa Rosa’s Montgomery Village in late 2023. Courtesy photo.

Shake Shack has over 500 locations in 18 countries and 33 states, with more than $1 billion in revenue.

Shake Shack is located at 2424 Magowan Drive, Santa Rosa. The restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

This $3.5 Million Farmhouse in Healdsburg Offers Idyllic Wine Country Living

February 2024

By Karen Kizer

A traditional farmhouse and ADU on 175 acres in Healdsburg is currently listed for $3,500,000. (Matt McCourtney)

A gracefully decorated 1920s farmhouse on a 175-acre ranch in Healdsburg’s Dry Creek Valley has hit the market. The property, which includes a main house with five bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms as well as an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), is listed for $3,500,000.

Just 15 miles north of downtown Healdsburg, the home at 4701 Wallace Road features 2,400 square foot of living space and overlooks expansive meadows and a creek. In addition to the main house and ADU, it boasts a guesthouse with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen, as well as a gazebo, a cabana and a sparkling lap pool surrounded by grass and trees.

The main home has been decorated with a nod to the past. Vintage details include champagne-hued walls, board-and-batten wainscoting, and large-scale moldings and trims. With clean lines and limited beveling, the finishes have a transitional if not timeless look. A dormer window, a succession of double-hung windows, and kitchen skylights bathe the home in light.

A modernized kitchen offers lots of prep space, while separated dining and living rooms give focus to their different uses. Many rooms are accented with a unique selection of chandeliers.

The covered porch with balustrade wraps as well as an uncovered side porch offer a perch to take in the natural surroundings.

The landscaping is minimal and simple, with a few plants surrounding the main home and a lawn in the common area between the structures while the rest of the property is left untouched and natural. The property includes 32 acres suitable for viticultural or equestrian use.

Click through the above gallery for a peek inside the home.

For more information on 4701 Wallace Road, contact listing agents Craig Sikes, 707-322-7300, craig.sikes@sothebysrealty.com, or Hunter Sikes, 707-321-5375, hunter.sikes@sothebysrealty.com, Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty, 1485 First. St., Napa, sothebysrealty.com