Where the California state flag was born — Sonoma Plaza, June 14, 1846. Before sunrise on June 14, 1846, about thirty American settlers rode south out of the Sacramento Valley, crossed into the Mexican pueblo of Sonoma, and took General Mariano Vallejo into custody at his home on the north edge of the town's eight-acre plaza. They had with them a strip of unbleached cotton on which one of them, William Todd, had hand-painted a grizzly bear, a five-pointed star, a red bar at the bottom, and the words "California Republic." They raised that flag over Sonoma Plaza and declared an independent republic — the only republic California has ever had. It lasted twenty-five days. On July 9, 1846, the United States flag was raised over the same plaza, ending the California Republic and folding Alta California into the Mexican-American War. The hand-painted Bear Flag became the basis of the state flag of California, formally adopted in 1911. Sonoma Plaza is still the largest town plaza in California — and the Bear Flag still flies there on the anniversary every June.
The town's lore comes from the Plaza and from the Valley. Residents will point you to the precise corner of the Plaza where Todd painted the flag the night before the raising — a back room of the Sonoma Barracks. They'll tell you about the morning Vallejo, in full dress uniform, offered the Bear Flaggers his own brandy while waiting to be taken to Sutter's Fort. About Buena Vista's 1857 vines and the rootstock Haraszthy brought back from Europe that started a wine industry. About Jack London writing The Valley of the Moon at Beauty Ranch in Glen Ellen up the road, and dying there in 1916 with the manuscript of a Sonoma novel on the desk. Coast Miwok, Pomo, and Wappo families lived in the Valley for thousands of years; the 1838 smallpox epidemic that swept through the Sonoma Valley remains the heaviest layer of that long history.
Why People Visit Sonoma California
- Walk Sonoma Plaza — eight acres, the largest town plaza in California, ringed by adobes, with the Mission Revival City Hall in the center and the Bear Flag Monument on the northeast lawn.
- Tour Mission San Francisco Solano on the Plaza's northeast corner — the 21st, last, and northernmost of the California missions and the only one founded under Mexican rule, established by Father José Altimira on July 4, 1823.
- Visit the Sonoma Barracks beside the Mission — the 1830s Mexican army barracks where General Vallejo's troops were stationed and where the Bear Flag was painted in 1846, now part of Sonoma State Historic Park.
- See the Bear Flag Monument on the Plaza's northeast lawn — a bronze of a Bear Flagger raising the flag, dedicated in 1932 on the spot where the original flag was raised on June 14, 1846.
- Tour Lachryma Montis, General Vallejo's Carpenter-Gothic home a short walk west of the Plaza, preserved as part of Sonoma State Historic Park.
- Visit Buena Vista Winery just east of town — founded in 1857 by Agoston Haraszthy, the father of California viticulture, and the birthplace of California's premium wine industry.
- Drive the Sonoma Valley AVA — the Valley of the Moon — north toward Glen Ellen and Kenwood, with vineyards producing Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel, oak hills, and the Mayacamas Mountains forming the eastern wall.
- Detour to Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen — the Beauty Ranch where London wrote The Valley of the Moon, a regional Sonoma Valley site about twenty minutes north.
- Drive west to the Sonoma Coast — about forty miles to Bodega Bay and the long Pacific shoreline of Sonoma Coast State Park.
- Return June 14 for Bear Flag Day, when the Plaza fills for the annual re-enactment of the 1846 raising.
