Laguna Learning Center
STone Farm History & Location
Stone Farm: Location and History
The farm site that will become the Laguna Learning Center was built by Harrison Valentine, one of Santa Rosa’s earliest settlers and a founder of its first Protestant church, between 1852 and 1870. The site is located on a rise overlooking the Laguna on the north side of Occidental Road and just east of the Laguna channel. The Civil-War era buildings on the farm are believed to include the oldest surviving farming structures in Sonoma County still in their original rural setting, and the Santa Rosa Cultural Heritage Board has designated the site City Cultural Heritage Landmark #1.
Architectural Style
The farmhouse, circa 1865, is a T-shaped two-story Greek Revival or Homestead ranch house believed to be Sonoma County’s oldest surviving farm building still in its original rural setting. The California Department of Parks and Recreation Historic Resources Inventory report on the property describes the house as “an excellent example of rural Homestead architecture during the settlement and early American period.” The house has been unoccupied since 1984.
The small barn and hop barn, contemporary with the farmhouse, are of classic 19th century design with pegged mortise and tenon joints and square nails. The Historic Resources Inventory describes them as “unaltered...and typical of such ranch structures in the area.” These practical, well-built structures were erected in an era when Sonoma County was one of the most agriculturally productive regions, acre-for-acre, in the world.
A Trip Back in Time
When it is completed, visitors to the Laguna Learning Center will be able to feel that they have traveled back to the time of Harrison Valentine. Our visitors will turn from a country lane onto a gravel driveway following the historic alignment of Old Occidental Road. Climbing the hill through a pasture still in use by an adjacent dairy, they will arrive at the farmstead, commanding a spectacular view of the Laguna de Santa Rosa and across the valley to mountains, with Mt. St. Helena rising in the distance. Upon parking, they will walk through a recreated 19th century family farm garden and orchard, and past a restored seasonal wetland growing native plants used in Pomo basketry, to reach the building complex of the Laguna Learning Center: the restored historic farmhouse, hop barn and small barn, and the new interpretive center.