Where to Start Looking for Healdsburg

Healdsburg may be the latest "wine country discovery," but to those who have lived here for years or even decades there's more than a bit of  irony in the term. The town celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007, and has flirted with fame before – after all, it was the setting for Wes Craven's horror comedy "Scream" in 1996.

Now we have starred Michelin restaurants, $500-plus hotel rooms, artisan cocktails, a jazz festival, and approximately 86 wineries, from A. Raffanelli to . If we had a Trader Joe's there'd be no reason to go anywhere elsewhere. 

Needless to say, it hasn't always been like this. What did this town used to be like? What sort of people lived here? What is  the story of Healdsburg, anyway?

For tourists and locals even casually interested in Healdsburg history, there's one place to start: The Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, housed in the imposing Carnegie building on 221 Matheson St. at Fitch, just a couple blocks east of the Plaza.

If you've visited the previously, you may have been frustrated by its occasional lack of answers to your simplest question — what's the story of Healdsburg? In response, the museum board recently decided to have always on display a refreshed presentation of Healdsburg's local history. Seasonal or other special exhibits will occupy only half the floor space, but still illuminate the character and traditions of the town.

This November, for instance, they held a Dia de los Muertos exhibit in mid-gallery, complete with spicily odoriferous pastries, candied skulls and prayer candles, assembled by the high school's Mexican American Youth Organization. On either side were more conventional exhibits – Pomo arrowheads and fish baskets, Spanish land grant maps, lumber mill artifacts, the counter gun from the Dry Creek Store (circa 1909), handmade horseshoes, Dry Creek Neighbor Club quilts and handbills from the same era, and more.

This coming month of December, and probably into 2011, they will present their annual show with holiday artifacts from an earlier era. This year's theme is "," whose juxtaposition can only be cheerily seasonal. As always, museum entrance is free: though donations are welcome, the only obligation is to sign the guestbook.

The Historical Society half of the family is largely housed downstairs, in the Research Center – "the heart and soul of the museum," as curator Holly Hoods described it. This is a real treasure trove for serious historians, with its genealogical records, voters rolls and census data, an extensive collection of historical photographs, oral history transcriptions and tapes, maps, and a detailed local newspaper index dating from 1858 – the year after shop owner Harmon Heald hired a surveyor to lay out the streets and lots around a central plaza. (And yes, you can find an original 1857 survey map in the Research Center.)

However well-suited to its task this historical building is, it was as not always a museum. For that, we take a look back in time -- using the resources of the Historical Society itself -- to its early incarnation, as town library.

Come back next Tuesday for a historical look back.