The hook
A wooden Russian fort with an onion-domed chapel on the wild Sonoma coast, the southern edge of the Russian empire in America.
01Why it's worth it
In 1812, Russians and the Alaska Native hunters they brought with them built a stockaded fort on this remote Sonoma bluff to hunt sea otters and grow food for their Alaskan colonies. Fort Ross was the southernmost reach of the Russian Empire in North America, and it's been restored: a redwood palisade, blockhouses, the commandant's house, and a little Russian Orthodox chapel with a wooden dome, all on a windswept headland over the Pacific. It's a surprising piece of history, imperial Russia on the California coast decades before statehood, and the setting of empty grassland cliffs and crashing surf makes it feel like the edge of the world it once was.
02How to experience it
It's on Highway 1 north of Jenner, a slow, gorgeous, winding coast drive. Pay the day-use fee, walk the reconstructed fort and the chapel, and take the trail down to Fort Ross Cove where the ships anchored. Living-history days bring it to life; dress for wind and fog either way.