The largest city in Northern California’s wine growing region opens up the pathways along its Santa Rosa Creek and Prince Memorial Greenway park areas for the Santa Rosa Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K, which marks its 16th annual running in the late summer of 2024.
Open to both runners and walkers, the race features plenty of sights that make for a memorable run, from the trestle bridges runners cross over the creek to the vineyards and farm fields filled with rows of corn along the race route.
Most of the race takes runners just west of the city’s downtown along the paved, natural surface and gravel pathways that parallel the meandering Santa Rosa Creek, much of which has undergone restoration efforts in recent years to reintroduce more natural environments and habitat for the native species of fish and birds that once thrived there, but had long since migrated elsewhere as the creekbed was paved over and became a haven for homeless encampments and vandals.
Start and finish in Juilliard Park. Starting in the 1980s, groups of concerned citizens in Santa Rosa began turning their attention and their fundraising efforts toward the creek, and since then many areas have opened up once again with trees and parkland, as well as paved pathways for running, walking, hiking and biking along the creek, which extends out west from Santa Rosa’s downtown district, and even passes by its City Hall building, which lies just a couple of blocks north of the race starting line, in Juilliard Park.
