The town's lore comes from the Plaza and from the Valley. Residents will point you to the back room of the Sonoma Barracks where Todd is said to have painted the flag the night before the raising, and tell you how Vallejo, in full dress uniform, offered the Bear Flaggers his own brandy while waiting to be taken to Sutter's Fort. They'll point east to Buena Vista's 1857 vines and the European rootstock Haraszthy brought back that started an industry, and north to Glen Ellen, where Jack London wrote The Valley of the Moon at Beauty Ranch and died in 1916 with a Sonoma novel on his desk. And they will tell you, too, that Coast Miwok, Pomo, and Wappo families lived in this valley for thousands of years — and that the 1838 smallpox epidemic which swept the Sonoma Valley remains the heaviest layer of that long history.
Today Sonoma is the historic anchor of California's wine country, a year-round destination organized around the same eight-acre plaza General Vallejo paced out in 1835. Visitors come for the Plaza, the Mission, the Barracks, the Bear Flag Monument and the adobes; for the Sonoma Valley AVA wineries north and east of town pouring Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel; for the Valley of the Moon drive up to Glen Ellen; and for the Sonoma Coast a short drive west. Our Sonoma designs gather that identity into wearable form. Explore the collection and carry California's flag with you.
Why People Visit Sonoma California
Sonoma is the rare California town where the state's earliest chapters are still standing on the same square. Visitors come for the Plaza — the largest town plaza in California — and the adobes that ring it. They come for the Bear Flag Monument and the story of the 25-day California Republic. They come for Mission San Francisco Solano, the last of the California missions. They come for Buena Vista and the Sonoma Valley AVA, where California's premium wine country began. And they come because Sonoma is, in the most literal way, where California started.
