Picking up where we left off, at the end of June with last week’s paper, we find to no surprise that the first weekend in July 2025 was, as always, preoccupied with Independence Day celebrations, parades and fireworks. And so it was in 2025—our July 3 issue had a colorized postcard of a late-19th-century parade in the Plaza, plus details on the Duck Dash, Kid’s Parade and American Legion Fireworks show the next night.
Also covered was the newly named Mill Street Row, a business park in development across the avenue from the more high-profile Mill District. The businesses in the Row included Coyote Sonoma, Jane Dispensary, the Elephant in the Room and Parish Café, each a potential anchor tenant in their own right. It got better: the celebrated Condor & Quail bakery moved in later in the year, giving this historic mill works a solid impact on downtown identity.
The July 10 issue re-introduced the Harm Reduction Coalition, including two retired physicians David Anderson and Walter Maack, who embarked on wide distribution of Narcan. With the Police Department’s social worker Jeff McGee, the group distributed thousands of Narcan inhalers to counteract heroin and fentanyl overdoses, bringing the quick-acting antidote to at-risk populations, local stores and businesses.
Gay Wine Weekend, formerly a Sonoma Valley event, embraced its new home with the July 29 issue and SIP, Songwriters in Paradise, showed up for its third year in Healdsburg. Also celebrating its third year in town was the BloodRoot Ramble festival of alt-rock bands, held at the Community Center in early June. Such targeted social events helped focus Healdsburg’s identity as not just about wine, but as a community that has it all.
Too, Healdsburg continued to be seen as quite receptive to the Hispanic population and heritage found here—appropriately, as Healdsburg’s population has been almost one-third Latine for decades. The Oaxaqueño tradition of Guelaguetza came to the Plaza on July 27, introducing the deep Indigenous traditions of Southern Mexico to Plaza Park, the one-acre tree’d and green square in the heart of town. Dances, songs and prayers, and arts and crafts animated the heart of the town that Harmon Heald sketched out in 1856. That cultural receptivity included the Pachanga Arts Festival in September and the Dia de Muertos celebration in October, both held in the Plaza.
The Aug. 7 issue, intentionally or otherwise, focused on transportation. A local group of air-aware members of Climate Action Healdsburg took action to bring car idling to public awareness, with signs and outreach backed by the Healdsburg Police. Our neighbor to the south, Windsor, basked in early morning calm as SMART agreed to a “quiet zone” within city limits. And “lowrider culture” showed its colors at the Latino-owned Bacchus Landing in a photo essay by Tenay Macmillan.
The recent loss of local bookseller Aaron Rosewater was brought achingly back to mind in our Aug. 14 issue by Pierre Ratte. Rosewater’s steady intelligence and kindness seemed as if from another era, said Ratte, “an era that savors tranquility and gentility …” The same issue included a photo essay by Rick Tang about the annual Zucchini Festival at the Saturday market, one of those steady traditions that likewise stems from another era.
With the collapse of the Koi Nation’s plans for a Windsor-area casino in April, we were intrigued by the parallel occurrence of accelerated development at the River Rock Casino. Overlooking Geyserville, it will become the third Caesar’s Republic destination in the Caesars Entertainment empire in 2027.
Looking back on the summer issues of The Tribune now, it’s striking how many stories are about local history. Not only the recurring “Flashbacks” column every two weeks from the Healdsburg Museum, but the museum’s own opening of a new, year-long exhibit on the town’s diverse past, and the rediscovery of a still-vital tribute to Healdsburg history though the lens of a local high school project of almost 30 years ago. Though the colorful mural has always hid in plain sight—at least since it was painted in 1989—a rumor that it was to be covered over swept social media, creating a crisis where there was none. That, however, is emblematic of so much news today.
A “slide and slump” surface failure on North Fitch Mountain Road finally received help from the County Public Infrastructure Department with a $3 million fix, opening up the round-the-mountain road after extended closure.
As the fall school year got underway, sports again took up some ink in The Tribune. The high school tennis team was a contender, but the girls golf team blew away the competition from here to Eugene. Meanwhile the boys football team got off on the wrong foot and had to forfeit the Sept. 12 game at home against Lower Lake, because they just didn’t have enough players on the roster to continue play. “I can’t risk our guys like that,” said first-year coach Taylor Tappin. The Greyhounds never quite got their balance back, and did not chalk up a win all season long.
Considering the tumult playing out on the national scene, things went along pretty much as normal for weeks at a time. In mid-September the Raven Players staged a black comedy about vaccinations called Eureka Day, we took a photo-tour of the city’s solar array at the Water Treatment Plant, and what may be the last Healdsburg Arts Festival to be held in the Plaza filled the space with color and crafts on Sept. 20.
Things returned to controversy in October, which broke with the news that the luxury bed-and-breakfast The Ruse was seeking a permit to run a luxury rehab facility, to be known as Ruse Treatment, on Grove Street. This slightly absurd idea accompanied its still-active application for a liquor license, making residents wonder who’s ruse-ing who.
Also in October, Healdsburg mom Emily Peterson helped introduce an all-inclusive Magical Bridge Playground to Badger Park’s long-range plans, the True West three-screen cinema opened at last and Fire Station No. 2 held an inaugural event across the road from Enso Village. Another “No Kings Protest” on Oct. 18 brought about 2,000 people out to Healdsburg Avenue, continuing to add the local voice to a national sentiment.
November saw the start of demolition at the Healdsburg Boys & Girls Club on Piper Street, which will be rebuilt over the next 18 months as a new home for the after-school crowd. The high school cross country team found unprecedented success as it earned a place for the boys team in the state CIF Championship meet in Fresno, while the 76th annual Redwood Empire Invitational Basketball Tournament brought REIBT back to Smith Robinson Gym.
The holiday music season began with the Klezmatics’ return to the Raven on Dec. 9, but the City Council continued to pressure local groups, including the Healdsburg Arts Festival, to forego their traditional Plaza location in favor of the new Community Pavilion. As the year drew to a close the city showed off the features of the Foley Family Community Pavilion at an Open House, complete with speeches, cocoa and pretzels, on Dec. 15.
The year ends with a bright and colorful 51-foot holiday tree looming over the Plaza, despite a Christmas Eve effort by the Grinch to extinguish the lights in a windstorm. For still-more-recent news, consult this issue of The Healdsburg Tribune—and those to come in 2026.
