"To the state, it's a highway," Supervisor Lynda Hopkins told The Press Democrat in May, talking about Front Street. "But to us, it's Main Street."
The same gap between what Caltrans sees and what the town sees applies to the grassy lot under the oaks at 6990 Front Street. Downtown Oaks Park works as Forestville's town square. It hosts the holiday tree, the farmers market, the pie contest and the trailhead. No city or county parks department pays for any of it. Most of what changed there this year was funded by rock from the hills around town, sometimes as cash and sometimes as the stone itself.
A town square without a parks department
Lucy Hardcastle's Forestville column in the Sebastopol Times calls Oaks Park a private park. The Forestville Partnership Alliance manages it, and Hardcastle is the group's president. Her June president's message lists what the park holds over a year:
- Farmers markets
- Forestville's Holiday Tree
- A yearly Skate Spot fun run and a Forestville School bike-a-thon
- A Mardi Gras celebration
- Pie in the Park, the fundraiser for the park itself
- Parking for trail users and overflow parking for the town
- The gateway to the West County Trail, which she says hundreds of people use each week
That list covers a big share of the town's public calendar, and a small board keeps it running. The same message lists what the group still wants to build. A stage with electricity is on it, along with seating, and a restroom that may depend on expanding the gravel parking lot north toward Mirabel Road if the County can secure that property.
Where this year's money came from
The FPA had two pools of money to give out in its 2026 community grants, announced in late August. Contributions from Canyon Rock Quarry paid for six projects. Money from BoDean Quarry, topped up by the FPA, paid for five more.
Several of those grants went to the park or to events held there:
- $3,000 to Christa Moné for a drystone walling workshop in Oaks Park, with Canyon Rock Quarry donating the rock
- $2,000 to the Forestville Chamber of Commerce for the farmers market at Oaks Park
- $2,000 for the Forestville Holiday Tree, covering the purchase, transport, putting it up, decorating it and taking it down
- $2,444 to The Funky Forest for three town events, the Holiday Faire, the Mardi Gras party and a new Halloween Booo Bash in the park
Those four grants total $9,444. The other grants reach well past the park. They paid for restroom repairs at Forestville Youth Park, monthly lunches for the Prime Timers Club, food purchases for the Forestville Food Closet, a redwood picnic table for the Hollydale Club, work on the AIDS Memorial Grotto through the Food for Thought Memorial Garden Project, and instructor fees for the Forestville Skate Spot's free after-school skateboarding program. Taken together, the list shows the quarries funding much of the town's civic life, with the park at the center.
The quarry's rock was slated to become a seat wall
The biggest of the park grants paid for a structure made of the quarry's own stone. Moné's dry stone walling workshop was scheduled for October 26 through 29 at Downtown Oaks Park. Certified instructor Dan Peterson was to teach students to build a freestanding, double-faced seat wall without mortar, using stone from a local quarry. The four-day course filled up, and it was pitched to masons, landscape contractors, architects and homeowners who wanted to learn the craft.
The FPA has bigger plans for the wall than a place to sit. Hardcastle's June message planned for about 15 feet of stacked stone along the front edge of the park. That wall would be the base for a metal "Forestville Downtown Oaks Park" sign marking the park and setting off its two entrances. Next in line is a second metal sign listing the "Acorns," the donors who gave $1,000 or more toward the Ag and Open Space matching grant. The same message mentions a possible "Fire Safe" demonstration garden from the Fire Department and a pollinator garden guided by the Atascadero/Green Valley Creek Watershed Council.
October showed what the park is for
October's calendar in the park doubled as fundraising, all of it put on by neighbors. Starting October 1, a dozen or more scarecrows lined the paved trail. Forestville School students built them, local businesses sponsored them, and park visitors voted on their favorites all month.
On October 17, the third annual Pie in the Park raised money for the park itself. Volunteers cut each donated pie into six slices and sold them at $5 a slice, and local bakeries donated pies for a Pie Walk. Hardcastle's column describes the park's ordinary days too, with coffee from Sunshine Roasters or a pastry from Nightingale Bakery under the oaks, plus dog walks, strollers and the trail link to Graton and Sebastopol.
The month's calendar was set to close on October 31 with the first Booo Bash, from noon to 3 p.m. The Funky Forest was the host, and the plan called for kids trick-or-treating at vendor booths, lunch from La Fogata Taco Truck and the announcement of the scarecrow winners. Part of the quarry money the FPA passed along helped pay for that afternoon.
The Holiday Faire takes the season onto Front Street
The same funding carries into December, moving one block over. The Forestville Holiday Faire is set for Saturday, December 5, from 1 to 7 p.m. It is based at The Record Mill, 6566 Front Street. Shops and restaurants will be open, vendors will line the street, brass bands will stroll and play holiday music, and the listing promises festive dancers and a possible visit from Santa. Amber Gray organizes it. She is the founder and president of The Funky Forest, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The 2026 event listing calls this the fourth annual fair and promises more than 60 vendors.
The fair is young, and its start time keeps moving earlier:
- December 16, 2023, 4 to 8 p.m. The first fair, organized by Record Mill owner Chris McDonald and Amber Gray, with the Chamber involved
- December 6, 2025, 3 to 7 p.m. Open shops, vendors, brass music, dancers and Santa
- December 5, 2026, 1 to 7 p.m. Six hours, the longest run yet
This year's fair starts two hours earlier than last year's and three hours earlier than the first one, so more of it falls in daylight. The Holiday Tree in Oaks Park belongs to the same season. Its $2,000 grant covers the tree from purchase to takedown.
The crosswalk planned out front is quarry money too
The next change at the park's front edge would come from public money, and that public money also traces back to the quarries. Sonoma County's Front Street Active Transportation Project would add crosswalk warning lights, a new crosswalk across Highway 116 at Oaks Park, an eastbound bus pullout in front of the park and new sidewalk along its frontage. The Chamber first asked for these improvements in 2014. According to Dan Northern, writing for the Chamber in the Sebastopol Times in April, the project is funded with more than $4 million in local quarry fees. Hardcastle's June message says the FPA is working on getting that sidewalk in front of the park through the pending County crosswalk project.
Front Street is a state highway, so Caltrans has to approve the project, and Caltrans has required 5-foot Class II bike lanes between Mirabel and Covey in both directions. In the same April piece, the Chamber estimated that the lanes and related changes would remove 15 to 20 parking spaces. It reported that 70 percent of more than 400 people in a fall 2025 community survey preferred Class III sharrows, which keep cyclists in the travel lane. More than 100 people attended the April 21 Caltrans meeting at the El Molino campus library. The Press Democrat reported that Hopkins said the County was working with Caltrans on alternatives that better fit the town's parking needs.
Two timelines are easy to confuse. The County's project presentation forecast construction on the downtown work between fall 2026 and fall 2027. That was a projected schedule, not a start date. The second is Caltrans's separate repaving of Highway 116 between Sebastopol and Monte Rio, which The Press Democrat reported at about $34 million over 16 miles. That project received its environmental approval on June 29, 2026, and Caltrans plans to begin work in summer 2029.
The parking stakes connect back to the park. The FPA counts the gravel lot at Oaks Park as overflow parking for the whole town. If Front Street loses curb spaces, that lot would likely take on more of the load, on fair day and on ordinary Saturdays. Under the current plans, the crosswalk, the sidewalk and the stone seat wall would all sit along the same stretch of park frontage.
When we talk with clients about Forestville, Oaks Park and the people behind it come up as often as the river does. If you would like a read on how downtown's next few years could affect your corner of town, or what the high end of the West County market looks like right now, Sonoma Coast Living is happy to talk it through. View the Luxury Market Report.
