Fortuna's downtown is a single long block of Main Street with a handful of side streets, lined with one- and two-storey storefronts dating from the early 20th century. It has a working hardware store, a few cafes, a couple of antique shops, two cinemas (one of them the lovely 1937 Atrium Theatre), and the old Carnegie-era library. The buildings are not architecturally distinguished but they are intact and lived in — a small American main street that has not been hollowed out by big-box retail.
Friday-night walks down Main Street in the summer have a small-town quality that is increasingly rare. The downtown puts on a series of summer concerts at Newburg Park and a Christmas tree lighting on the green. If you are passing through on US-101 it is worth a half-hour detour for a coffee and a stroll.