Santa Rosa, California - Tourism

Tourism

Santa Rosa sits at the northwestern gateway to the Sonoma and Napa Valleys of California's famed Wine Country. Many wineries and vineyards are nearby, as well as the Russian River resort area, the Sonoma Coast along the Pacific Ocean, Jack London State Historic Park and the redwood trees of Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve.

The city sprawls along Highway 101, about an hour north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Airline service by Horizon Air, from the Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport, just north of Santa Rosa, is available to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle. The City Council is also encouraging major new commercial and residential development along the planned Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) railway from Larkspur to Cloverdale, parallel to Highway 101. SMART, scheduled to open in 2014, is funded by a sales tax surcharge passed by Sonoma and Marin voters in 2008.

The City Council pays the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce to operate the Santa Rosa Convention & Visitors Bureau. The Chamber's visitors center is in the city-owned old railroad depot at the bottom of Fourth Street, in Historic Railroad Square. The SRC&VB has been a California Welcome Center since 2003.

Downtown Santa Rosa, including the central Old Courthouse Square and historic Railroad Square, is a shopping, restaurant, nightclub, and theater area. Downtown also includes City Hall, State, and Federal office buildings, many banks, and professional offices. The Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital medical center is just to the east.

The City Council funds a private booster group, Santa Rosa Main Street, which lobbies the city to revitalize the traditional business district. Three new mixed-use, high-rise buildings, and a new city parking garage, are under development. The Council and downtown business boosters hope condos atop the new buildings will house a population to keep the area active 24 hours a day.

The nearby towns of Bodega Bay, Calistoga, Guerneville, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Sebastopol, Sonoma and Windsor are popular with tourists and readily accessible from Santa Rosa.

Railroad Square is the portion of downtown that is on the west side of U.S. Route 101 and has the highest concentration of historic commercial buildings. Of particular note are the four rough-hewn stone buildings at its core, two of which are rare in that they predate the 1906 earthquake. They include the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad depot, prominently seen in the beginning and the end of the Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, and the still-functioning Hotel La Rose, built in 1907 and registered as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Historic Hotels of America. The area contains numerous other historic buildings, such as the former Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad depot, and the Lee Bros. Building, both at the corner of 4th and Wilson Streets. Near it in the West End district are numerous other old buildings, including not only many old houses but the masonry DeTurk Winery complex, dating to the 1880s-1890s, and the DeTurk round barn. Also of note nearby is the former Del Monte Cannery Building, built in 1894. One of the oldest surviving commercial buildings in town, it was renovated into the 6th Street Playhouse in 2005.

Local attractions

• Carrillo Adobe. Built in 1837 for Dona Maria Ignacio Lopez de Carrillo (General Mariano Vallejo's mother-in-law), the Carrillo Adobe was the first home on the site of the future Santa Rosa. The remains of the Carrillo home rest behind a cyclone fence off Montgomery Drive, on property owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa in California, adjacent to its Cathedral of St. Eugene.
• Luther Burbank Home and Gardens
• Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center
• Redwood Empire Ice Arena ("Snoopy's Home Ice")
• Sonoma County Museum
• Annadel State Park
• Spring Lake Regional Park
• Prince Memorial Greenway. This is a developed bicycle and pedestrian path along Santa Rosa Creek through downtown and out to the west of town. Near Railroad Square, it connects directly to the Joe Redota Trail, a paved path which goes to Sebastopol.
• Railroad Square. With the highest concentration of historic commercial buildings in Santa Rosa, this portion of downtown is popular with tourists and locals alike.
• Historic residential neighborhoods. Although most of Santa Rosa's commercial buildings were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, almost all of its numerous houses survived and most have survived to this day. As a result, Santa Rosa has a number of old neighborhoods in and around downtown, several historically designated. These contain numerous old homes, including many Victorians. Most of these are on quiet, often tree-lined streets.