Reconsidering the Building of the Hotel Petaluma: Visionary, Not Gullible

Author: Stuart A. Sutton
Professor Emeritus, University of Washington

A recent commentary on the Petaluma Historian blog titled “Petaluma’s Hotel Déjà Vu” has suggested that the citizens of Petaluma “got played” when they rallied in 1922 to finance the Hotel Petaluma through local stock subscriptions. The implications of the piece are that Petaluma is getting “played again” with the Appellation Petaluma Hotel project. That claim oversimplifies history and disregards the civic and infrastructural context that framed the Hotel Petaluma project in 1922. Far from being duped, Petalumans were participants in a broad and forward-looking civic investment movement that swept the American West during the 1920s.

The Hotel Petaluma was conceived as a community improvement project, not a speculative real-estate venture. Similar citizen-financed hotels were being built in Chico, Redding, and Napa — each a sign of civic optimism and confidence in local prosperity. Petaluma’s residents subscribed to shares not because they were misled, but because they sought to place their town on equal footing with its regional peers.

Critics often forget that in 1922, Sonoma County’s tourism infrastructure had not yet matured. The Golden Gate Bridge would not open until 1937, and the San Rafael–Richmond Bridge until 1956. Until then, travel from San Francisco and the East Bay to Petaluma relied on ferries, riverboats, and rough roads. The hotel’s backers correctly anticipated the economic importance of visitors and travelers, but they did so more than a decade before the road network made such travel commonplace. In that sense, the hotel was visionary but premature — a civic investment waiting for the region’s connectivity to catch up.

The early struggles of the Hotel Petaluma were not the result of deceit or folly but of structural timing. When the Golden Gate Bridge finally opened, Petaluma’s location on the main north-south highway confirmed the foresight of those 1920s investors. The building they created—still standing proudly in the heart of downtown and freshly restored — is a testament to their confidence in Petaluma’s future, not evidence of their being “played.”

Moments in history are framed by their context. When examined in light of its time, the building of the Hotel Petaluma stands as an act of collective civic ambition, not of misplaced trust.

Date: November 10, 2025

Reference:

John Patrick Sheehy, Petaluma’s Hotel Déjà Vu: How Citizens got played 100 years ago (Oct. 11, 2025). Online: https://petalumahistorian.com/petlaumas-hotel-deja-vu/