The Miwok called it “Péta Lúuma.” The Spanish reduced it to “Petaluma.” I tried to get “Lumaville” to stick when “P-Town” seemed to be gaining ground, only to have the annual bumper crop of teens rechristen it “Deadaluma,” just like always. Now, if anecdotal reports prove true, a sizable influx of thirty- to forty-somethings from San Francisco and the East Bay are moving to Petaluma who simply call it “home.”
“I hear the story almost every day,” says Natasha Juliana, owner of WORK, a co-working space in the city’s downtown. “It’s gotten comical. Especially young families with young kids and parents in their 30s and 40s. They’re coming from San Francisco, the East Bay, and even farther away, like New York and Chicago,” she says. “And then we also see a lot of people who grew up here, went away for a long time, had children and have moved back.”
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“It feels more real and it doesn’t feel so suburban. It’s not like suburban sprawl,” says WORK’s Juliana. “[I can go] four minutes outside of town and be in real working farmland. There’s a quality to Petaluma that’s really authentic, partly just because of the history and the agricultural history. It has a diversity of people still living here. It’s not Mill Valley.”
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It wasn’t until this century that Petaluma realized the intrinsic lifestyle value of its rural village roots and embraced it wholly. Couple this with Sonoma County’s upgrade from “Redwood Empire” to “Wine Country,” and suddenly we’re trendsetters. But does influence necessarily lead to affluence, specifically of the kind that would make Petaluma fear it was turning into Mill Valley?
“I have a lot of friends who worry about that,” observes Juliana, who is confident Petaluma will maintain its community-driven values. “But you also have to evolve as a town, otherwise you become a desolate ghost town.”
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Juliana puts it this way: “Honestly, this is the first place where I feel really at home. I feel like I fit in.”
I concur completely. Sweet home Deadaluma, Lord, I’m coming home to you.