A short history of Petaluma
The City of Petaluma, California, was settled in 1850 along the banks of what is now known as the Petaluma River. In 1879, Lyman Byce invented the first successful incubator for hatching eggs, and a new and amazingly profitable industry was introduced in Petaluma. Hundreds of chicken farms dotted the landscape around town, and with the price of eggs at 30 cents a dozen, profits from the egg business poured into Petaluma. By 1917 Petaluma was the undisputed world leader of the chicken and egg industry. 
The Petaluma Chamber of Commerce hired Promoter Bert Kerrigan to capitalize on the chicken mania and he declared the town "The Egg Basket of the World". By 1920 the price of eggs was up to 50.5 cents per dozen, and the money continued to pour into the town. For more than two decades, there was more money on deposit in Petaluma banks, per capita, than any other town on Earth. The enormous prosperity in Petaluma sparked a spectacular building boom throughout the city, most of which can be seen to this day.
The epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was only 18 miles southwest of Petaluma. While towns further from the quake were destroyed, Petaluma escaped with little damage. As a result, hundreds of pre-quake buildings still exist in the town, and the downtown area has an extraordinary mix of architecture from the 1870s to the present. This availability of architectural styles has drawn the motion picture industry to Petaluma where numerous movies and more than 100 commercials have been filmed during the past 30 years, most notably American Graffiti, Peggy Sue Got Married, and the Morning In America television ads for Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign.