page_title: Sebastopol, California
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sebastopol, California / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Main Street, Sebastopol, California.
context_page_description: Sebastopol is a city in Sonoma County, in California. The population was 7,379 at the 2010 U.S. Census. Sonoma County has a population of up to 50,000 residents.
  It is about a 20-minute drive from the Pacific Ocean, between Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay, and is known for its liberal politics and small-town charm. It was once primarily a plum- and apple-growing region; wine grapes, however, are now predominant, and nearly all lands once used for orchards are now vineyards. Famous horticulturist Luther Burbank had gardens in this region. The city hosts an annual Apple Blossom Festival and Gravenstein Apple Fair.
context_section_description: The area's first known inhabitants were the native Coast Miwok and Pomo peoples. The town of Sebastopol formed in the 1850s with a U.S. Post Office and as a small trade center for the farmers of the surrounding agricultural region. As California's population swelled after the westward migration and the California Gold Rush of 1848–1855, more and more settlers drifted into the fertile California valleys north of San Francisco to try their hand at farming.
  There is some debate about how the name "Sebastopol" came into use in Sonoma County. At one time, four other California towns were also named Sebastopol:
  one in Napa County, renamed Yountville
  one in Tulare County
  one in Sacramento County
  one in Nevada County
  The town in Sonoma County originally had the name Pinegrove; the name change (according to rumor) had something to do with a bar fight in the late 1850s, which was compared by a bystander to the long British siege of the seaport of Sevastopol (1854-1855) during the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The original name survives in the names of two  downtown businesses: the Pinegrove consignment store, and the Pinecone restaurant.
  Sebastopol became known as the "Gravenstein Apple Capital of the World". The apple industry brought a steady rural prosperity to the town.  In 1890 the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad connected Sebastopol to the national rail network.  The town was incorporated in 1902, with schools, churches, hotels, canneries, mills, wineries, and an opera house to its credit.  The 1906 earthquake reduced most of these early buildings to rubble (Sebastopol is only seven miles from the city of Santa Rosa, the worst-hit town in the 1906 earthquake), but as elsewhere in the county, the town was rebuilt.
  In the second half of the 20th century, the apple industry struggled to compete with other apple-producing regions and  gradually declined in economic significance. With greater personal mobility and the rise of larger shopping centers in other Sonoma County communities, many residents now often commute to work and shop in the neighboring towns of Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa, while Sebastopol maintains its small-town charm.
  It is often incorrectly claimed that Sebastopol was the last town in Northern California to have working railroad trains on Main Street.  The tracks were removed in the late 1980s. Passenger service had ceased in the 1930s, and regular freight service ended in the late 1970s.  This was documented by Analy High School students in a 1979 video Our Train Down Main: a History of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad.  The canneries and apple-processing plant are gone from downtown, and vineyards and housing developments have replaced many apple orchards, reducing the demand for freight service.
  It is often also incorrectly stated that the tracks were removed in the 1990s when the downtown area was redesigned with two one-way streets to enhance traffic along Gravenstein Highway (Route 116). Main Street and Petaluma Avenue were actually designated one-way streets in 1985 in an attempt to deal with the town's perennial traffic problem.  As of 2016 the old train station houses the Western County Museum.
caption: Main Street, 1908
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