"Healdsburg - Former Prune & Hop Town" Healdsburg by WulfstanTraveller

Healdsburg is now, and has for some time been, possibly the most touristy and ritzy town in Sonoma County, save possibly Sonoma itself, which rose as a tourist spot a little earlier. Healdsburg is the central commercial and tourist hub of the northern Sonoma County winery area.

An example, of early Healdsburg's prosperity.

The town was early on one of the largest towns in the county. In the 1850s ans 1860s, it was roughly tied with Santa Rosa and only Petaluma was much larger. Along with Santa Rosa, it was incorporated in 1867 (Petaluma, by far the biggest town in the county at the time, was incorporated in 1858).

The town was by 1870 falling far behind Petaluma and Santa Rosa in size, but for a very long time the third largest town in Sonoma County. It was prominent as a centre of the region's prune industry and its hop industry, both major crops in the county until well after WWII.

With the decline of the old industries and the spread of automobile suburban culture, the town languished as growth and culture in the county focused on Santa Rosa and places to the south. The town became known as a blue-collar, down-at-heel backwater.

However, as the wine fever spread from Sonoma and Napa, by the early 1990s Healdsburg started to boom as the centre of the northern tourist-winery industry.