Housed in the original 1911 Carnegie Library — a modest but handsome Neoclassical building on Matheson Street — the Healdsburg Museum covers the history of the Dry Creek and Russian River valleys from the Pomo people through the rancho era, Gold Rush, and the rise of wine country. The collection includes Pomo basket weaving, agricultural tools from the hop-growing years (Sonoma County was major hop country before Prohibition), and documents from the early winemaking families.
Carnegie libraries were built to exacting standards — high ceilings, good light, quality materials — and this one has aged well. The building itself is worth a few minutes of attention.
story: "Healdsburg was hop country long before it was wine country. In the 1880s, Sonoma County supplied much of the nation's hops, and thousands of workers — many of them Pomo and other indigenous people — converged each September for the harvest. The crop collapsed after Prohibition, but the museum preserves the record of that earlier agricultural boom."