The Petaluma Adobe
Near Sonoma Sebastopol, California
West of Sonoma, on a rise above the Petaluma River valley, stands the largest privately owned adobe building ever raised in California. The Petaluma Adobe was begun in eighteen thirty six on the orders of General Mariano Vallejo, and it was the working heart of an enormous ranch, Rancho Petaluma, that once spread across roughly sixty six thousand acres. This was not a fort and not a fancy home.
It was a factory and a hub. Inside its thick sun dried brick walls and beneath its wide balconies, Native American laborers, many of them Coast Miwok and Pomo people working under a system that ranged from wages to something close to servitude, tanned hides, wove blankets, forged iron, made candles and shoes, and processed the grain and cattle that made Vallejo one of the wealthiest men in Mexican California. Cowhides were so central to the trade that they were nicknamed California banknotes.
Vallejo's family used the adobe as a summer retreat and for entertaining, while they mainly lived in the town of Sonoma nearby. The rancho declined after the American takeover and the loss of Vallejo's lands. Today the surviving wing is preserved as Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park, recognized as both a California Historical Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
