Guerneville is a census-designated place in Sonoma County, California, USA. As of the 2000 census, its population was 2,441. Guerneville is a popular family destination, gay resort, and camping center in the Russian River Valley. It was founded by the Guerne family four generations ago in the 1850s.
The town is a vacation destination for people from the San Francisco Bay Area and since the legalization of gay marriage in California has been attempting to capitalize on gay honeymoon business in its off season.]
The town hosts the annual Lazy Bear Weekend, from late July to early August, a gay bear charity event for the LGBT community.
Guerneville's older metal truss bridge can be filmed from the newer bridge, and made an appearance in the movie Mumford as a location for people to walk and talk in idyllic settings.
The Russian River area occasionally appears in local and/or national news due to significant winter flooding, the worst of which occurred in 1986. Long-term residents treat floods as a major headache, but a reasonable price paid for living in a beautiful place. Because much of the housing is elevated, thanks in large part to FEMA grants, floods no longer have the impact they once did and recovery for most residents and businesses is much faster than in earlier times. The effects of floods are mitigated by the extensive upstream floodplain storage capacity of the Laguna de Santa Rosa.