Healdsburg Veterans Memorial Beach is a Sonoma County Regional Parks site on the east bank of the Russian River at 13839 Old Redwood Highway, a few minutes south of the Healdsburg plaza. It is the rare California swimming hole that gets manufactured on purpose every summer, and the machinery that makes it is the whole story of the place.

The county raises a seasonal summer dam here. Despite how often it gets described elsewhere as an inflatable bladder, it is not one. It is a set of flashboards lifted by crane onto an existing permanent foundation in the riverbed, a practice the county has repeated annually since 1955. The boards back the Russian River up into a broad, slow, flat lagoon immediately downstream of the steel truss Memorial Bridge, deep enough to actually swim in rather than wade. The schedule is set by fish rather than by demand. Flashboards go in no earlier than June 26 so juvenile steelhead and salmon can finish moving downstream and American shad can move up, and they come out right after Labor Day, generally by around September 12, to stay clear of upstream migrating chinook. In practice the county describes the dam going up in early July and the lagoon lasting through Labor Day.

When the dam does not go in, this is a different place entirely. Regional Parks skipped it in 2020, 2021 and 2022 on a combination of pandemic disruption and drought driven low flow, and in those summers the site was more beach than river, a shallow ribbon of slow green water good for wading and not much else. The dam returned in 2023 and has been the normal summer pattern since. Anyone planning a trip should confirm the dam is actually in before driving out, because the swimming here depends on it.

The beach itself is sand, and it is steep, steep enough that the county renovation master plan proposes regrading it. Lifeguards work the marked swim zones daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Labor Day, with the county describing coverage beginning around Memorial Day weekend. Free loaner life vests are available in summer, and all terrain wheelchairs are free on a first come basis. The park has shady picnic lawns, a parcourse fitness circuit, flush toilets, an outdoor shower, drinking fountains, and accessible parking and restrooms. Gates open at 7 a.m. and close 30 minutes before sunset. Leashed dogs are fine on the lawn and in the parking lot but are not allowed on the beach or in the river.

Parking is 12 dollars per vehicle in summer and 8 dollars the rest of the year, free with a Regional Parks membership, which runs 69 dollars general, 49 dollars for ages 62 and up, and 29 dollars for people with permanent disabilities. The county runs no boat launch and no rental concession of its own, but River's Edge Kayak and Canoe operates out of 13940 Healdsburg Avenue from May 1 through October 31, Thursday to Sunday, and its customers park at the beach and check in there before shuttling upriver.

Sonoma County Environmental Health samples this beach weekly from Memorial Day to Labor Day as one of ten monitored Russian River beaches, testing total coliform and E. coli and posting warnings above 10,000 and 235 organisms per 100 ml respectively. The larger risk on this river is cyanobacteria. Anatoxin-a killed two dogs on the Russian River in 2015 and toxic algae advisories have recurred in the years since, so keep children and pets away from algae mats and do not let anyone drink the water. USGS gauge 11464000, Russian River near Healdsburg, is the flow record to check. A master plan that would replace the seasonal dam with permanent terraced pools, regrade the beach and improve non-motorized boat access is in public review, and nothing has been built yet.