Sebastopol, the Gravenstein Town

The town around you got its odd name from a barroom brawl on the far side of the world. Sebastopol was first called Pine Grove, a small trade center for the farmers of these fertile hills north of San Francisco. Then, as local tradition tells it, in the late eighteen fifties, two men named Stevens and Hibbs got into a fistfight.

Hibbs fled into a local store owned by a man named Dougherty, who barred the door and would not let Stevens follow. Stevens paced the road outside for hours, unable to get at his foe. To the crowd, the standoff recalled the long Allied siege of the seaport of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, then in the news, so they nicknamed the store Sebastopol.

When it came time to name the post office, the joke stuck. The land itself proved golden. The area became known as the Gold Ridge for its rich soils, and by the nineteen thirties this district produced the great majority of the Gravenstein apples grown in California.

The Gravenstein is an early ripening, tart, fragrant apple, wonderful for sauce and pie but too fragile to ship well, which is one reason the orchards have slowly given way to vineyards. Sebastopol still celebrates its heritage every summer with the Gravenstein Apple Fair.