Friends of the Petaluma River: A Riverside Haven for North Bay Families

A Riverside Hub with a Heart for Community

Friends of the Petaluma River has made its base at Steamer Landing Park, a 9.7-acre stretch of open space tucked behind downtown Petaluma that the city established as a public park in 1996. You have probably driven past the entrance without noticing it. From D Street it looks like a service road, but the little drive opens onto a vista point over the channel, and a dirt path that leads into a genuinely wild slice of the McNear Peninsula.

At the center of it sits a photogenic red barn now known as the David Yearsley River Heritage Center. It began life as a livery stable more than a century ago, stood downtown in what is now the Theater District, and was eventually cut in half and hauled over to the river in two pieces. It carries the name of the nonprofit's late founder, David Yearsley, and it anchors everything the organization does.

The mission is simple and the staff say it plainly: "to celebrate the Petaluma Watershed through education and stewardship, because every great River needs a true Friend." That sense of welcome runs through their stated goals too, which include promoting access to the river and marsh for all community members and acting with integrity, equity, and inclusion across every program. For local parents, that means a place where a child can get muddy, paddle a boat, and learn the name of a bird, all within walking distance of the SMART train.

Kids Classes in Petaluma: Year-Round Days on the River

Among kids classes in Petaluma, Friends offers something distinctive: a standing, year-round invitation to spend a full day outside. Their Nature Immersion program runs roughly once a month from fall through spring, a single weekday from 9 to 3 at Steamer Landing for children ages 5 to 12. There are no screens and no worksheets, just the watershed itself as the classroom. It is the kind of unhurried, place-based day that childhood is supposed to include.

A typical Nature Immersion day might include:

• Paddling the Petaluma River, learning to read the wind and the afternoon tides in the calm of the downtown turning basin.
• Splashing through seasonal creeks and roaming the rolling hills, following whatever the season is doing across the watershed that week.
• Getting to know local plants and wildlife, from the egrets and Canada geese overhead to the edible and medicinal plants growing along the banks.
• Nature-based games, crafts, and quiet "sit spots," where kids practice simply noticing the world around them.

Mentors group children into age-based cohorts a few weeks ahead of time, and families can request that friends be placed together, so a shy first-grader and a buddy can share the day. Children tend to come home with muddy knees and a story about a heron or a crayfish, which is exactly the point.

Kids Camps in Petaluma: A Summer on the Water

When school lets out, the river becomes a summer base camp. For families weighing kids camps in Petaluma, Friends runs two distinct programs that grow with a child.

The heart of the summer is Green Heron Nature Camp, a weeklong day camp for ages 5 to 12 split between Steamer Landing Park and Open Field Farm out on Spring Hill Road. Campers spend their weeks kayaking on the river, swimming in the pond at Open Field Farm, tracking wildlife, wild-crafting, and learning about edible and medicinal plants, with a different expert special guest dropping in each week. There are sit spots for stillness, nature-based art for the rainy-day energy, and a camp T-shirt to take home. Welcome packets come in both English and Spanish, a small detail that tells you who they are trying to reach.

Older kids graduate into Golden Eagles, a teen nature immersion for ages 13 to 16. This is the deep end in the best sense: wildlife tracking, fire-making, paddling, knife skills, outdoor cooking, and working with edible and medicinal plants, building toward a three-day, two-night campout at Open Field Farm with stargazing and campfire meals. All food is provided, transportation is arranged for the campout, and the focus is squarely on resilience, leadership, and friendship. Teens describe coming away with mental clarity and a real break from the noise of everyday life.

Summer at Steamer Landing has a rhythm the staff know well. "During the summer things get pretty busy out here, beginning with our TransHumance event in May, where we have sheep grazing out here for about a week or so," Executive Director Stephanie Bastianon told the Petaluma Argus-Courier. "Earlier in the month we generally have our river cleanup event, where a couple of hundred people come out to pick up trash up and down the river and various creeks around town." Kids who camp here are joining a much larger, year-round community of people who love this stretch of water.

An Accessible, Welcoming Place for Families

Friends works hard to keep the river open to everyone, and the access story is one of the best parts of what they offer. Full and partial scholarships are available across the camps and the Nature Immersion days, with a simple online application, so cost does not have to be the deciding factor for a family that wants their child outdoors. The single-day Nature Immersion sessions, at $75, also make for a low-commitment way to try a day on the river before signing up for a full week.

Inclusion shows up in the practical details. Camp welcome packets are published in English and Spanish, and the organization has been hiring a bilingual environmental educator to support kids and families in both languages. Beyond the paid programs, Steamer Landing hosts free community moments too, from the spring river cleanup to "Boating at the Barn," a long-running offering where visitors can check out kayaks and small boats and explore the river at no charge. The camp refund policy is straightforward as well, with a full refund (less a modest fee) for cancellations made at least two weeks ahead.

Friends lists its current classes and camps on Enrichment.kids, where you can filter by age and date and register in a few clicks, which spares busy parents from refreshing a flyer or scrolling social media for the next open session. It is a small convenience in service of a much bigger thing: getting one more North Bay kid down to the water.

Where Curiosity and Community Flourish

What stays with families is how the place feels. There is a particular calm to a morning at Steamer Landing, the marsh grass moving, a train bell ringing somewhere behind you, a kid proudly holding up something they pulled from the creek. It is a working stretch of river that has been deliberately left a little wild, and that wildness is the gift.

"It's a beautiful spot," Bastianon told the Argus-Courier of the park. "And a lot of people don't even know it's here. That's part of its beauty, in a way." For the families who do find it, the river becomes a fixture of childhood, the place where a five-year-old learns to paddle and a sixteen-year-old learns to build a fire.

Stewardship, curiosity, accessibility, connection, and community, Friends of the Petaluma River embodies all these values for North Bay parents and kids. If you are looking for a way to give your child an unhurried day outdoors, browse their current classes and camps, or simply find the quiet drive off Copeland Street and walk down to the barn. The river has been waiting for a true friend, and it turns out there are a lot of them in Petaluma.