"Santa Rosa - Roses and Peanuts" a Santa Rosa Travel Page by Rixie

Santa Rosa is about 1.5 hours north of San Francisco, in Sonoma County. It is named after St. Rose of Lima, and its attractions include the roses at Luther Burbank Gardens and the Charles Schulz Museum, commemorating the late cartoonist and creator of "Peanuts" -- Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Schroeder, et al.

Even though it is a small city, there are still some breathtakingly beautiful areas, like this view of Julliard Park, where you'd swear that you were out in the country.

Cartoonist Robert LeRoy Ripley of "Believe it or Not!" fame was born in Santa Rosa, and until recent years, the Ripley Memorial Museum was located there in a small church that was carved from a single redwood tree. It was an appropriate place for Ripley's museum, since his cartoon strip presented bizarre-but-true occurences like the two-headed calf on this bench mural.

Two interesting facts about "Believe it or Not!":
* The Star Spangled Banner was adopted as the US national anthem because of the cartoon strip. In 1931 Ripley stated that the country had no national anthem. Even though the song had long been considered the American national anthem, it had never been formally adopted. A huge furor resulted (170,000 people wrote letters to Ripley), and that year the U.S. Congress made it official.

* "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles Schulz, who is immortalized in another museum in Santa Rosa, had his first start in the business when he sent Robert Ripley a cartoon of his dog, who ate pins and needles with no ill effects. Ripley included it in "Believe It or Not!".

There are some lovely homes, old and new, in Santa Rosa. Every time I pass this restored Victorian, the headquarters of the Sonoma Land Trust, it calls to me, "I want to belong to you!" I love the wrap-around porch and turrets.