Celebration set for Santa Rosa’s 150th birthday

Santa Rosa turned 150 this year and thousands are expected to join a grand community celebration next week for Sonoma County’s largest city.

The sesquicentennial party kicks off at 3 p.m. on Sept. 8 in Old Courthouse Square and includes a packed lineup of music, dancing, a ceremony to bury a time capsule, a birthday cake toast and a movie.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event; there will only be one sesquicentennial,” said Santa Rosa City Councilman John Sawyer, a member of a subcommittee that worked three years to plan the event. “This particular one will never happen again, and people will have to wait 50 years to enjoy this kind of celebration and the memories that come with it.”

The free celebration, expected to draw about 5,000 people, will feature food and wine for sale, a car show to highlight vehicles from various decades, a fashion show hosted by the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery and other entertainment. After a performance by the Redwood Empire Chinese Association’s dancers, the event ends with an 8 p.m. showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt,” filmed in Santa Rosa.

“It’s a perfect opportunity for people to get that sense of community, to gather with their neighbors in celebrating what Santa Rosa has accomplished and to celebrate and look forward to the future as a group,” event manager Judy Groverman Walker said.

The celebration to commemorate Santa Rosa’s March 16,1868, incorporation will give attendees a chance to see the contents of a time capsule that will be buried later this year, Walker said.

The capsule will contain letters from City Council members and community leaders about public transportation, last October’s historic wildfires, homelessness and women’s rights. Also, it will include Press Democrat articles on the 2017 reunification of Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square and the wildfires last year, as well as a piece of glass fused together by some of those flames.

Other items going into the time capsule will be a railroad track spike with the SMART train logo, an iPhone and a DVD with the city’s history, among other relics with individual explanations, said Historical Society of Santa Rosa President Staci Pastis, who was involved with curating items to go into the capsule.

The city budgeted about $103,000 for the celebration and collected $50,000 in sponsorships, Sawyer said.

For the Saturday event, the city plans road closures on Fourth Street from B to D streets and on Mendocino Avenue from Courthouse Square to Fifth Street from noon to 8 p.m.

You can reach Staff Writer Hannah Beausang at 707-521-5214 or hannah.beausang@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @hannahbeausang.