Fountaingrove Winery and Round Barn, built over a century ago, were renowned local landmarks

Fountaingrove Winery was one of California’s 10 largest wineries in the early 20th century, and its red Round Barn was a Santa Rosa landmark — until demolition and wildfires wiped out the familiar local icons.

Fountaingrove was founded in 1875 north of Santa Rosa by mystic Thomas Lake Harris, leader of the Brotherhood of the New Life religious colony. Harris said the 400-acre property was to be the “Eden of the West” that would ascend into the “celestial sphere” when the new millennium came, according to the Sonoma Historian in 2002. Ranch buildings were constructed promptly for his utopian commune and more acreage would be added later.

By Harris’ side when founding Fountaingrove was Kanaye Nagasawa, a Japanese student on a mission to learn about Western culture, and one of the first Japanese immigrants in the United States.

Wine grapes were planted at Fountaingrove by 1878, and a few years later a massive stone winery was completed — one of the earliest industrial uses of basalt stone in the Santa Rosa area. The commune flourished as successful winemakers, and their winery became “one of the first four Sonoma County wineries to gain national attention,” as well as international recognition and distribution, according to the Fountaingrove Club website.

The winery burned in the early 1890s and was quickly rebuilt, along with numerous other structures that made up the Fountaingrove complex. Harris left for New York City in 1892 and placed Fountaingrove in Nagasawa’s control. Harris died in 1906.

Nagasawa led Fountaingrove with gracious hospitality, hosting parties and visiting dignitaries at the estate, and soon he was known as “The Baron of Fountaingrove.”

In 1899, Nagasawa ordered construction of a large, round barn to house 60 vineyard horses, and the Fountaingrove Round Barn later became a landmark, instantly recognizable at the northern entrance to Santa Rosa.

After decades of running the renowned winery, Nagasawa died in 1934, leaving Fountaingrove to his niece and nephew. According to a Rafu Shimpo article in 2017, California’s discriminatory “Alien Land Laws” at the time forbade Japanese nationals from owning land or businesses in the state, so part ownership of Fountaingrove went to a U.S. trustee. Nagasawa’s heirs completely lost the land, worth millions, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, leading to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The vineyards at Fountaingrove were removed, marking an end to the once-prosperous winery. Ownership of the 2,000-acre property changed hands a number of times through the years, and by the 1980s it included a hotel, restaurant, golf course and clubhouse.

The old winery buildings were neglected for decades and fell into such a state of disrepair that the city had the crumbling ruins demolished in 2015. The Round Barn, however, remained on the Fountaingrove ranch property, surviving the 1906 earthquake and 1964 Hanly Fire and eventually designated as a historic landmark.

Then in 2017, the Tubbs Fire destroyed the iconic red barn along with a wide swath of the Fountaingrove neighborhood.

“The Round Barn had transcended even the history of the site and became very iconic for the city of Santa Rosa,” said Eric Stanley, associate director and curator of history at the Museums of Sonoma County, in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2017. “To lose touch with that history and that place…” Stanley trailed off.

People from around the county preserved the memory of the Fountaingrove Round Barn — long a symbol of the area’s thriving wine and agriculture industries — in the form of murals, models and even Christmas tree ornaments.

Check out the gallery above for historic photos of the old Fountaingrove Winery and Round Barn.