9 Most Walkable Town Centers In Northern California
Northern California is unusually generous with its walkable town centers. The Gold Rush left behind beautiful grids of brick storefronts, the wine country grew up around shaded squares, and the old harbor settlements crowded everything along a single waterfront. In each of the nine towns below, you can park once and let the rest of the day happen on foot. What makes them worth the walk is the history you meet right there on the sidewalk, if you slow down enough to notice it.
Sonoma
General Mariano Vallejo laid out Sonoma's central square in 1835, and at eight acres it remains the largest plaza in California. That single decision shaped how you experience the town today, since nearly everything worth seeing is within a few steps of the grass. City Hall stands dead center, designed in 1908 with four matching faces so that no merchant on any side of the square could complain the building faced away. Walk the perimeter and you pass adobe walls, tasting rooms, and bistros plating local figs and duck. Along the northern edge, you can step into the buildings of Sonoma State Historic Park, the mission and the Mexican-era barracks among them, for a close look at how settlers built the region. Three minutes away, curators at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art hang work by painters from across the Bay Area. The Walk Score of 95 only confirms what your feet already suspect: the car can stay parked.
Healdsburg
Harmon Heald drew up Healdsburg Plaza in 1857, and the town he founded now sits at 92 on the Walk Score index, deep into "Walker's Paradise" territory. Start on the square and follow Matheson Street in either direction to sort out the day. One way leads to the Healdsburg Museum, where staff rotate exhibits through a former library. The other, toward Foss Creek Parkway, is thick with restaurants, among them Dry Creek Kitchen, where Charlie Palmer's team turns out refined Californian plates beside a vine-covered terrace. Over on Centre Street, the crew at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts spotlight local talent, and a few doors down at Gallery Lulo you will find one of the more remarkable jewelry collections around. You can cover the whole circuit in a few unhurried blocks.
Benicia
For about a year, from 1853 to 1854, California's legislators governed the state out of Benicia, and the building where they met still stands one block off the main drag. It is the only pre-Sacramento capitol left standing, restored down to the period desks, quill pens, and top hats. First Street slopes downhill toward the water, its wide, dog-friendly sidewalks broken up by pocket parklets and one boutique after another, which helps account for the town's Walk Score of 89. Across from the capitol, the crew at Double Rainbow Cafe scoop rich ice cream and seat you on furniture shaped like sundaes, banana-split bench included. Keep walking and you end up at Benicia Marina, among a forest of sailboat masts, a fitting finish for a stroll that began in a statehouse.
Los Gatos
Los Gatos has a neat, two-sided layout: a downtown you can cross on foot, and wooded hills right beside it. Town Plaza Park, with its fountain, makes the obvious starting point, and North Santa Cruz Avenue runs the length of the shopping district from there. Duck onto Grays Lane, a short cut-through just off the avenue, and you reach the shops and the parking without crossing traffic. For a quieter stretch, pick up the Los Gatos Creek Trail nearby and follow the water away from the cafes. At Danbi Korean Restaurant, an easy walk from the park, the kitchen does a good kimchi, and at Campo di Bocce you can play a round on the bocce courts and stay for dinner if you would rather roll a ball than log more steps. Downtown, the Walk Score sits at 85.
Mill Valley
Charlie Chaplin once performed on Throckmorton Avenue, back when the Throckmorton Theatre opened as a silent-film and vaudeville house in 1912 and a young Hattie Krausegill accompanied the pictures on piano and organ. Most of a Mill Valley visit still plays out along that avenue on foot. A few doors down, staff at the Chandler Gallery show contemporary paintings and mixed-media work worth a pause. Keep climbing Throckmorton and you reach Old Mill Park, where redwoods form a green canopy overhead at the foot of the trails up Mount Tamalpais. Only a short walk separates the storefronts and the old growth, which is much of the appeal, and the Walk Score of 90 bears it out.
Sausalito
Bridgeway follows the waterfront, and almost every shop, cafe, and gallery in Sausalito sits along it, so the walk practically plans itself. Start with a croissant at Franko & Coffee, then reward yourself a few doors on with a scoop from Lappert's Ice Cream and its lineup of unusual flavors. Gabrielson Park sits at the foot of downtown where the shoreline meets Richardson Bay, and on a clear day you can see the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge across the water. Farther along, a fountain and elephant statues mark the center of Viña del Mar Park, and at Sausalito Books by the Bay you can settle in with a book and the same view. The Walk Score here is 84, though you will remember the water at your shoulder longer than the number.
Nevada City
Broad Street is where to begin a Nevada City morning, its Gold Rush storefronts now full of shops, cafes, and galleries within a block or two of each other. Step into Brothers Art and Antiques for a rack of vintage clothing kept in beautiful shape, then walk less than 300 feet to Communal Cafe, where the owners serve excellent pastries beneath a wall of work by local artists and stock a case of produce from nearby farms. When you want a break from browsing, take the short uphill push to Pioneer Park, with its calming views over the rooftops. Before you leave, the owners of Shiva Moon can tell you the origin of nearly everything on their shelves, which makes settling on a souvenir the easy part.
Half Moon Bay
Bakers at Half Moon Bay Bakery have been firing the same brick ovens since the early 1900s, and locals still line up on Main Street for the pumpkin bread that comes out of them. You will find that same sense of continuity all through this San Mateo County downtown, where preserved buildings now hold independent shops and galleries and the Walk Score sits at a strong 88. Just off Main, the Coastside History Museum fills the town's 1919 jail, its original concrete cellblock still in place beside exhibits on the coast's farming, railroad, surfing, and Ohlone history. From there you can wander to Ocean View Park with its playground, or out toward Venice Beach, one of the strands that make up Half Moon Bay State Beach. Zigzag back through town and you finish at John L. Carter Memorial Park, under a stand of redwoods.
Ferndale
Ferndale's whole town center sits on one street, which is why walking it feels far easier than the Walk Score of 62 lets on. That single Main Street forms a National Register historic district of exceptionally preserved Victorian storefronts known as "Butterfat Palaces," a nod to the dairy fortunes that paid for them in the 1880s. Inside Golden Gait Mercantile, the shelves stand packed floor to ceiling with heirloom goods and old-fashioned candy, a 19th-century country store kept alive. A little farther on, the 115-year-old former Methodist church now holds two tenants under one roof, The Old Steeple and the Ferndale Music Company. Catch a show at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre, then stop by the Ferndale Arts Gallery a few steps along, where the handmade driftwood guitars alone justify the browse.
Park The Car
What ties these nine downtowns together is not their Walk Scores, which range from Sonoma's near-perfect 95 to Ferndale's modest 62. It is that in each one, the best material is within reach of your own two feet: a mission-era plaza in Sonoma, a capitol-on-wheels in Benicia, a dairy-boom Main Street in Ferndale, a waterfront in Sausalito that stays in view the whole time. Drive between them if you like, but once you arrive, the reflex to keep driving is the thing to resist. Park, order a coffee, and take the walk slowly, because you will pull the best stories out of these towns only on foot.
