10 Picture-Perfect Main Streets In California
California dreaming typically manifests in the form of a windows-down drive past sunny beaches, or possibly touching the trunk of a towering redwood as you hike past. But we mustn't forget that the historic and hip towns scattered through the state shine just as brightly. Whether they're centered on an old Spanish mission, a bumpin' surf beach, or an overlooked Victorian village, the main streets of these 10 Californian communities are worth the film. Let me show you what I mean.
Ferndale
Once a year, human-powered sculptures the size of parade floats come grinding down this street after three days of crossing sand dunes, mud, and Humboldt Bay. Ferndale is the finish line of the Kinetic Grand Championship, and the rest of the year it looks like a film set, which it has been more than once. The entire Main Street District is on the National Register of Historic Places, merging Victorian architecture with Norman Rockwell nostalgia. This Humboldt County town, sitting between the accessible redwood groves of the North Coast and the isolated shorelines of the Lost Coast, blossomed on dairy money. Strollers should note the ornate mansions the most successful farmers erected one block over, and the spires of several historic churches.
But enough about the periphery. Lining the four-block commercial core are retro coffee shops, pizza joints, anachronistic inns, art outlets, and boutique and trinket shops. Stepping into the Golden Gait Mercantile is to jump back a century or so, and to patronize The Farmer's Daughter is to taste Ferndale's dairy heritage first-hand, with local cheese and milk products alongside quality home goods and gifts.
Joshua Tree
This world-famous national park's namesake base camp isn't classically pretty, and that is the appeal. Built around the 29 Palms Highway, which slows to become its "Main Street" on the north side of Joshua Tree National Park, the town of Joshua Tree is equal parts transit stop and bohemian hub. Arid Mojave ranges intersect in the background, accenting the rusty, weathered look of the place. Old West-style wooden buildings sit interspersed with modern installations that are somehow already sun-scorched, plus metal sculptures, antique wagons, cacti, and decommissioned vehicles kicking around for artistic flair.
Before dashing down to the park, spend some time on the main drag. Whet your whistle at the Joshua Tree Saloon, where you're sure to find live music. Peruse the JT Trading Post for hand-crafted goods both inside and among the pop-up vendors on the sidewalk. Or just absorb the galleries and installations, one of which is an entire museum devoted to crochet, housed in a bright pink former photo hut roughly the size of a garden shed. Joshua Tree has many faces, and this eccentric main street complements the raw high-desert beauty next door.
San Juan Bautista
San Juan Bautista plays with that same dusty, old-fashioned vibe, and it has the receipts: the mission here was founded in 1797, more than half a century before California was a state. Like Joshua Tree, this small city acts as a base for one of California's rugged playgrounds, in this case Pinnacles National Park. Unlike JT, it is all about serenity. Though it might be tempting to beeline straight for the late 18th-century mission complex inside San Juan Bautista State Historic Park, I encourage you to take the circuitous route along Third Street.
The pedestrian-friendly commercial strip combines the best-looking parts of an American frontier town with the tiendas, adobes, and restaurantes of a Latin American pueblo. There's even a Peruvian store among the boardwalk shops. At the bookends of each block, you'll find a string of oak barrels that serve double duty as succulent planters and traffic control. So take your time, absorb the history, and enjoy the sights and smells of this curious cultural enclave.
Pismo Beach
We can't go too deep into a California journey without a fun-loving beach town. Pismo Beach is a Central Coast surf magnet with wineries, golf courses, and a grove where tens of thousands of monarch butterflies overwinter in the eucalyptus, clustered so densely the branches sag. And while there is a street literally named Main, Pomeroy Avenue, running parallel to it, is clearly the prime strip.
On its way down to Pismo Beach Pier Plaza, Pomeroy delivers gift and beach-shack gear shops, bowling alleys and arcades, and cheat-day summer grub, be it burgers, ice cream, taffy, or the local specialty, sourdough bread bowl clam chowder. If the latter is what you crave, check out Splash Cafe. Cap the wander with a walk out onto the pier, where, with the salty Pacific Ocean breeze in your hair, you're likely to spot a few more pop-up vendors, fellow coastal roadtrippers, and surfers tearing it up on curling waves.
Carmel-by-the-Sea
There are no street addresses in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Residents collect their mail at the post office and locations get described by cross street and building name, a holdover the town has never bothered to modernize. That is the register here. This one-square-mile village, one of California's 21 Spanish mission towns, has transformed into an opulent getaway specializing in high-end shopping, personable accommodations, and wining and dining, with over a dozen tasting rooms within a few blocks of one another, plus galleries galore.
Ocean Avenue, which juts west off the Pacific Coast Highway, further concentrates this microcosm as it trends gently downhill, funneling pedestrians toward the beach and some of the best sunsets in California. If you weren't pulled into one of the shops en route, this is where you'll catch intermittent mists teasing the wide sand, the white-capped water, and Pebble Beach, the golf course to the north that hosts US Opens.
Mendocino
If Pismo Beach taps into the party and Carmel takes the bougier approach, then Mendocino settles into the Goldilocks zone between them. Classy but approachable, quiet but invigorating, and seamlessly marrying nature with tasteful amenities, Mendocino's Main Street is quintessential coastal California. New England transplants built the town in the 1850s on redwood money, which is why a village on the Pacific looks like it wandered off the coast of Maine.
The bespoke businesses and pastel-sided establishments west of the Ford House Visitor Center & Museum all sit on the north side of the street, leaving unobstructed views of the wispy fields and cliffside trails of Mendocino Headlands State Park and the blue water of Mendocino Bay to the south. All the while, turn-of-the-20th-century wooden water towers speckle the low skyline, hinting at a not-quite bygone era. After you've snapped a few pictures, poke your head into the shops, where you'll find gourmet jams, California wines, your next favorite book, and other randomly excellent treasures.
Stinson Beach
This short and sweet main street is seriously popular in summer, for good reason, and turns serene the moment shoulder season descends. Stinson Beach sits within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, fixed between the verdant slopes of Mount Tamalpais and the namesake sand that stretches along Bolinas Bay. Cutting through the middle is a reduced-speed stretch of the Shoreline Highway, where the businesses are few and well chosen.
You've got a couple of surf shops, a mom-and-pop supermarket, an independent bookstore, a cottage-style cafe, and a women's boutique spliced betwixt a few low-key lodges and community buildings. What more could a traveller's heart desire? Granted, the beach is the primary draw for this unincorporated community, but this small main street chips in the vacation essentials and a few grid-worthy photo ops. Get there early on a July Saturday or you will not park at all.
Sausalito
Cycle over the Golden Gate Bridge and this is where you land, which is why the ferry back to the city is full of rented bikes every afternoon. Sausalito sits immediately north of the bridge and stares across at San Francisco's skyline and at Alcatraz. It isn't just a place for looking outward, though. Its spritely downtown core, which offers ample and affordable parking, I might add, deserves anywhere from a focused afternoon to a casual weekend.
Bridgeway is where the action happens. This thoroughfare, by far the longest on this list, hugs Richardson Bay, which opens into San Francisco Bay, and marinas, parks, high-brow cafes, and waterfront restaurants can all be found in spades. Keep heading southeast and you'll reach the Sausalito Boardwalk, which brings the community's colorful hillside homes into closer view. Look north from the waterfront and you'll spot the houseboat colony, a few hundred floating homes that grew out of a post-war bohemian squat and are now some of the most sought-after addresses in Marin.
Eureka
The grandest Victorian house in America sits at the end of this street, and you cannot go inside it. The Carson Mansion, built between 1884 and 1886 for lumber baron William Carson, has been a private club since 1950 and admits no tourists, which has only made it more photographed. It is said to have inspired the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Directly across the street stands the Pink Lady, which Carson built in 1889 as a wedding present for his son, painted bright pink in the 1960s specifically to contrast with his father's dark timbers.
Both anchor the eastern end of 2nd Street, which cuts through Eureka's Nationally Registered Old Town District. This Redwood Coast city, nicknamed the Victorian Seaport, is a fixer-upper in parts, but Old Town certainly holds up. Whether it's records and books, with multiple stores for each, galleries and cafes, or wine bars and cocktail joints, Eureka has you covered, and the establishments occupy restored Victorian structures rather than pastiches of them. Time your visit for a Friday evening or Tuesday morning and the markets take over the plaza.
San Luis Obispo
Let's end with one more inland stop, and one more Franciscan mission town. San Luis Obispo, or SLO, has a downtown that arguably runs several main streets at once. Some authorities would point you to Higuera, where the Farmers' Market takes over every Thursday evening and where an alley off the south side is coated wall to wall in several decades of chewed gum. I actually think Monterey Street has more going for it.
Monterey cruises past the Fremont Theatre and its weathered, alluring marquee, Antigua Brewing, and the Visitor Center, before hitting the street-patio establishments. Eventually it arrives at Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, founded in 1772, and its pedestrian plaza, where free concerts kick off on Friday evenings through summer. The Mission shares the plaza with the SLO Museum of Art and the History Center of SLO County. The result is a tanned, tree-and-tent-lined strip that appeals to window shoppers and history buffs as much as sippy socializers and quiet strollers.
Main Takeaways
From toasting craft pints on a sun-kissed patio to standing under the historic structures of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the 20th as well, because those old theatres are pretty cool too, these ten California main streets will have you constantly reaching for your camera. It doesn't matter if you're a desert dweller or a beach bum. Having personally walked each of these streets, camera in hand, I'm confident this list has something for every California dreamer.
