The Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center opened in August 2002, founded by Jean Schulz, the cartoonist's widow, in the Santa Rosa town where Sparky lived and worked for forty years. The museum holds the world's largest collection of original Peanuts artwork: hand-inked Sunday strips, the original sketches that became Snoopy and Charlie Brown, and the deeper archive of Schulz's career from his early days as a young Minnesota cartoonist through the half-century of Peanuts as a global cultural phenomenon. Three rotating exhibition galleries, a permanent biographical gallery, an exact replica of Schulz's Santa Rosa studio, and a small movie theater that screens animated specials.
The outdoor highlight is the Snoopy-head labyrinth: a ground-level walking maze in the shape of Snoopy's beagle profile, designed by Jean Schulz with landscape architect Yoji Sasaki. Adjacent to the museum on the same campus is Snoopy's Home Ice, the public ice arena Schulz himself built in 1969 and where he played hockey late into his seventies. The combined museum-and-arena visit is the full Sonoma County Schulz experience: gallery walk, studio replica, labyrinth, then an afternoon skating session at the rink the cartoonist founded. The museum is closed Tuesdays year-round; otherwise it's a casual drop-in destination at the gentle pace that Schulz himself preferred.
