About Sebastopol

A short drive north of San Francisco and surrounded by orchards and vineyards, Sebastopol features breweries, wine tasting rooms, art galleries, cafes, and Victorian neighborhoods dotted with folk art. Its historic, highly walkable downtown - replete with one-of-a-kind boutiques - is anchored at one end by a restored 1917 railway depot that’s now a museum, and at the other end by The Barlow, a beautifully landscaped, industrial-chic, 12-acre outdoor market district.

As the cultural and economic center for west Sonoma County, Sebastopol has a rich agricultural heritage. For much of the 20th century, apples were its main agricultural export, and many of our festivals still celebrate a famous local apple variety - the tart, red-speckled Gravenstein apple, a certified World Heritage fruit, which helped put Sebastopol on the map.

As the wine industry boomed over the last 50 years, winegrowers discovered that Sebastopol and the surrounding hills were the perfect environment for growing cool climate grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Old orchards were pulled out and replanted with grapes. Sebastopol is located in the Russian River Valley wine growing region, and our wineries are recognized worldwide as producing some of the best Pinot Noir on the planet.

Culturally, Sebastopol is a complex layer cake: part farm town, part hippy town, part wine country burg. It’s old agricultural base was joined (and some would say swamped) in the 60s and 70s by hippies from San Francisco, who came north as part of the back-to-the-land movement. Under their sway, Sebastopol became a hub of organic farming, known for its environmentalism, progressive politics, and its embrace of alternative lifestyles, which later attracted LGTBQ folks, who found a welcoming home in our community. The migration of ex-urbanites up from the Bay Area continued over the years and continues today as tech workers, freed from their offices, move north looking for greener pastures. They too will become a part of Sebastopol’s evolving story.

And, of course, Sebastopol is a gateway to the natural wonders of west Sonoma County: the wild Pacific coast, ancient and majestic redwood forests, and the popular Russian River recreation area.