The AmeriCorps Trail Is a Dry-Season Trail. Sebastopol's Laguna Keeps a Winter Calendar Too.

Kenyon Webster, Sebastopol's former city planner, gave the line people remembered from the September 28 ribbon-cutting. Standing near the south end of the new AmeriCorps Trail, he said, "Some of this land the new trail covers was once part of the old city dump. That tells you what they thought of the wetlands back then." The Sebastopol Times reported it in its October 4 roundup, along with a photo of Mayor Jill McLewis holding the scissors. Behind her stood council members Sandra Maurer and Phill Carter and representatives from Sonoma County Regional Parks and the county's Ag + Open Space district.

The ceremony was short. The project behind it took more than 30 years, and its timing tells you how it will behave. The town's newest public path opened officially at the end of September, just as the rains that historically make it hard to walk were about to return. The permits shaped the AmeriCorps Trail into a seasonal trail. As November begins, the Laguna side of Sebastopol is moving onto its winter schedule, with different doors, different buildings and different reasons to go.

Half a Mile Along Morris Street

On the ground, the trail is modest. It runs about half a mile from the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center parking lot at the north end to the meadow near the Highway 12 bridge at the south. It parallels Morris Street and has several access points along the way. The city lists the Laguna Wetlands Preserve entrance at the south end of the Community Center lot, 390 Morris Street.

At the southern end the trail crosses Zimpher Creek on a 48-foot pedestrian bridge. Pat Nelson Construction received the contract in June 2023. The bridge was finished in 2025 for $214,877, after added environmental requirements from the state Regional Water Quality Control Board and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delayed it twice. Until this summer it ended in blackberry vines.

Beyond the bridge is the meadow with Ned Kahn's "Sebastopol Spire," a 28-foot tower covered in metal scales that move with the wind. It was dedicated in September 2024. It sits behind the "Welcome to Sebastopol" sign at the eastern entrance to town, set back from Highway 12. The Spire went through its own long redesign. It began as a set of kinetic banners for the Highway 12 bridge, and Caltrans rejected that version over concern that drivers would find it too distracting. Moving the piece out of Caltrans' reach also put it where few people could get to it. The trail solved that problem.

How a Short Trail Took Three Decades

The trail's history explains why it works on a seasonal schedule. The Sebastopol Times traced it in an August feature by Rollie Atkinson:

1. 1992. The trail first appears in the city's Laguna Master Plan.
2. 2003. More than 100 AmeriCorps workers and volunteers clear brambles and rough out a route in a single day. The full path is not completed.
3. 2007. AmeriCorps returns and makes modest improvements to the dirt trail.
4. 2011. A Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation restoration grant pays for more workdays that clear sections of the trail.
5. 2018. The city applies for a $126,943 matching grant from the county's Ag + Open Space District, on a total project budget of $253,887.
6. The years after. The county district requires an environmental impact study and prohibits the infill and boardwalk sections the city's consultants had designed. State wildlife concerns stop work for several more years, and getting the easements and covenants submitted correctly takes six years.
7. 2023 to 2025. The Zimpher Creek bridge is contracted and built.
8. Late July 2026. Public Works crews finally clear vegetation along the route.
9. September 28, 2026. The official ribbon-cutting.

Step six decided what kind of trail Sebastopol has. The original design included boardwalk sections meant to keep walkers above the wet ground. Without them, the trail is "not a paved or flat path," in the Times' words, but "a rough and difficult walk with very muddy spots and uneven terrain." The paper put the total cost at about $800,000 and called the trail a "work in progress." A 2015 restoration and management plan for the preserve described the route as "frequently flooded in winter."

Weather affected the work this year too. Volunteer workdays planned for spring were canceled because the ground was wet. Oriana Hart, the city's Public Works director, told the Times that "late rains and an early cool summer" kept the area too wet for equipment until the last weeks of July. In August the city considered the trail walkable but not quite ready for visitors. By the September ribbon-cutting, it was ready.

The Boardwalk Hart Still Wants

Hart has described what year-round access would require:

"Longer term, I would love to continue the discussion about installing a raised boardwalk. That would allow year-round access while protecting the wetlands, but it will require additional funding."

That leaves maintenance as the open question. Over the past five years, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation organized crews to control invasive plants throughout the Laguna, but that funding from Sonoma Water and the Watershed Partners Program expired this year. Brent Reed, the foundation's stewardship director, told the Times that the foundation has no active role in the AmeriCorps Trail but keeps asking the city how it can help. "You always need more money for these kinds of efforts," he said. Council member Neysa Hinton, first elected in 2016, said the years of work showed how much the community "values our walkable community and parks."

The Footbridge Sets the Laguna's Calendar

Sebastopol already had one piece of Laguna infrastructure that follows the seasons, and the new trail now connects to it. Each year the city installs a floating pedestrian bridge that links the preserve's west-side trail to the Laguna Trail on the east bank. The city's parks page says it is in place "from late Spring to early Fall." In 2025 the city scheduled removal for September 30. In 2024 it set installation for May 15, depending on the rain stopping and the trails drying out enough for equipment. This season, the AmeriCorps Trail and its connection to that bridge were dedicated almost exactly when the bridge has usually come out. For the current status, check the city's news page.

When the floating bridge is out, the east bank is still reachable from the other side. The city lists the Occidental Road and Highway 12 trailheads as alternate access points. The Highway 12 trailhead is at 6303 Highway 12.

The city calls the Laguna "a premier bird-watching area." Winter is when that matters most, which is why the Laguna's public calendar stays full while the wetter paths get harder to walk.

The Winter Calendar, Through December

Several winter events take place at the Laguna Environmental Center, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation's base at 900 Sanford Road on the Santa Rosa side of the wetland. The walk and the tree lighting are in downtown Sebastopol, and the bird count covers a wider part of West Sonoma County.

The Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running date on that list. Madrone Audubon's West Sonoma County count reaches its 60th year on December 27. It is part of National Audubon's count, which began in December 1900 and is the longest-running citizen science survey in the world. Madrone Audubon is posting participation details in November, and its page has a form to get notified.

The November 28 Sebastopol Walks outing is the last on the city's 2026 schedule. The free guided walks run on the fourth Saturday of each month through November. The series has already been to the Laguna this year. On July 25, walk leader Peter Schurch took about 40 people from the Town Plaza along the buried course of Zimpher Creek, through the Barlow district, and out to the Spire. Ned Kahn met the group there to tell the story of the piece.

Between the Plaza and the Wetland

The July walk followed a route that works in any season. The Barlow sits between downtown and the Laguna, and its newest kitchen makes the walk easier on a gray morning. According to the Press Democrat, Wild Poppy Cafe opened a second location at 6780 McKinley St., Suite 160. The 3,500-square-foot former brewery space serves brunch and lunch and has an artisan marketplace and a deli case. It is open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and closed Tuesdays. The original cafe is still at 9890 Bodega Highway.

From there, the Community Cultural Center lot on Morris Street is a short walk east. The trail runs daylight hours only, and conditions after a storm vary, so it is best treated as a dry-spell outing. The Times wrote that "only lots more footsteps" will improve it.

If you have spent the past 30 years watching the Laguna side of Sebastopol, or are just getting to know it, The Shone Group would be glad to compare notes on the places that give this part of Sonoma County its character. Let's Get Started.