Mendocino County

administration
US state :	California
Administrative headquarters :	Ukiah
Foundation :	1850
Demographics
Residents :	87,841  (2010)
Population density :	9.7 inhabitants / km 2
geography
Total area :	10,044 km²
Water surface :	956 km²
map
Website : www.co.mendocino.ca.us

The Mendocino County is a county in the northwest of the US state of California with 88,000 inhabitants. The county seat is Ukiah with 16,000 inhabitants (as of 2010 ).

history

The name of the county is derived from Cape Mendocino , which was named in the 16th century by Andrés de Urdaneta in honor of Antonio de Mendoza or Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza . However, this cape is not in it, but in neighboring Humboldt County .

Mendocino County was founded in 1850, but initially had no self-government because there were almost no whites in the area. In 1855 the Indian reservation "Mendocino" was established here. In Mendocino War of 1859, most Indians were killed, 1866, the reserve was dissolved. After that, white colonization began. All of the remaining Indians, regardless of their tribal affiliation, were resettled in the relatively small Round Valley Indian Reservation . In the Round Valley War of 1887, most of the survivors died again. By the end of the 19th century, all Indian tribes from this area were almost exterminated. These included the Yuki , the Pomo , and the Wintun Indians. Today, a total of around 1,500 native American Indians still live in two small reservations and eight rancherias.

By 1900 the county's coast was a center of the lumbering industry with sawmills and railroad tracks to the coast for shipping the timber by sea. The settlements could only be reached by ship, there were no overland transport routes. Only later did it become known that the huge local trees had grown for 1000 years and would therefore take a correspondingly long time to renew. The sawmills had to close again in the 20th century due to a lack of wood; the last one existed until 2005.

Mendocino County has a National Historic Landmark , the Mendocino Woodlands Recreational Demonstration Area . 41 other structures and sites in the county are on the National Register of Historic Places .

The coast

Coast at Point Arena

Mendocino County is elongated on the coast of the Pacific Ocean . California State Route 1 runs along it , coming from the south through the following places:

• Gualala , a place with 2000 inhabitants. The river of the same name forms the border with neighboring Sonoma County .
• The towns of Anchor Bay and the neighboring Fish Rock . Behind the 800 meter wide beach are the Anchor Bay Campgrounds , which opened in 1925 .
• Point Arena is a city, with a population of just 450, one of the smallest in the United States. Underwater cables to Hawaii and Japan begin here. The town's lighthouse is the point on the American mainland (excluding Alaska) that is the shortest distance to Hawaii (3787 km). The Garcia River flows here .
• Manchester State Beach begins north of the lighthouse . The coastal road runs several kilometers inland through the small town of Manchester . Manchester State Park has been in between since 1955 .
• Elk was originally called Greenwood . Since this name was already taken in California, the post office opened in 1887 was called Elk Post Office , and this name was soon carried over to the city. Originally the place consisted of a large steam-powered sawmill and a railway line. The sawmill burned down in 1936, and because it was not insured, the local economy collapsed. New sawmills were built in 1953 and 1963, but by the late 1960s the forests were cleared. After a few quiet years, the place is now mainly used for tourism. The state acquired the beach at the mouth of Greenwood Creek and the original mill site, and established the public Greenwood State Park here .
• Cuffy's Cove used to be a town two kilometers north of Elk , today only the Cuffy's Cove Ranch is located there .
• At the confluence of the Navarro River , the road runs along it for a kilometer to a bridge. To follow her back to the coast, you have to turn left. State Route 128 begins on the right here (see below).

Albion River Bridge

• The steam-powered sawmill Albion Steam Mill was built in Albion as early as 1853 . The name of the mill was a homage to Francis Drake , who named California as "Nova Albion" as early as 1579, and was adopted for the place when the post office opened in 1859. A railway line was built from 1885, but never connected to the national network and dismantled again in 1937. Albion is located at the mouth of the Albion River . The overlying Albion River Bridge is a 1944 wooden structure, built during World War II when steel and concrete were scarce. In 2014, plans were presented to replace it with a new building twice as wide. However, there was protest, and in 2017 the bridge was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in order to preserve it as a national monument.

• The first post office opened in 1865 in Little River, at the mouth of the river of the same name. The local sawmill was closed in 1893, and tourism began earlier here than in other parts of the county. The local beach is called Little River Beach or Van Damme Beach (after the Van Damme State Park located here ). To the southeast is the small Little River Airport .

• Mendocino with the confluence of the Big River and Big River Beach . A road inland leads via Melbourne to Comptche .
• The Russian Gulch Bridge just behind Mendocino leads over Russian Gulch , a now uninhabited valley that was home to a sawmill from 1867 to the 1920s. The site has been the Russian Gulch State Park since 1933 .
• The lighthouse Point Cabrillo Light has stood on the coast between Mendocino and Caspar since 1909.

Jug Handle Beach near Caspar , with the Route 1 bridge in the background

• The town of Caspar with approx. 500 inhabitants has two beaches: in the south the Caspar Beach between Doyle Creek and Caspar Creek , in the north the Jug Handle Beach at the mouth of the Jug Handle Creek flowing through the Jughandle State Reserve . It was named after the German farmer Siegfried Caspar, who came here in 1857. There was a sawmill in the village from 1861 to 1955, which was able to hold up for so long by increasing the area for logging. It operated a rail network of 35 miles until 1945, but it was never connected to a main line. The foundations of the old sawmill can still be found at the mouth of Caspar Creek .

Fort Bragg with the Route 1 bridge over the Noyo River

• Fort Bragg is a town of 7,000 and by far the largest settlement on the county's coastline. It was established in 1857 as a military post office, in 1869 the country was opened to white settlers, and in 1889 Fort Bragg became a city. From south to north there is here
  • the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens between the road and the coast, since 1961.
  • the bridge over the Noyo River , which flows into the sea over a bay (see photo on the right). The community-free area adjacent to the river Noyo no longer belongs to the city.
  • the station of the Skunk Train , which runs to Willits with historic steam locomotives.
  • the Glass Beach consists of colorful glass pebbles that were created from deposited garbage.
  • the bridge over Pudding Creek , under which there is a beach.

A sparsely populated stretch of coast begins north of Fort Bragg.

• The place Cleone . The local sawmill a mile and a half inland from the village existed from 1883 to 1904, on a rail connection to the loading port, the wagons loaded with wood drove down under their own gravity and were pulled back empty by horses.
• Inglenook . North of it flows into the Ten Mile River , so named because it flows into the sea ten miles (16 kilometers) north of the Noyo River .

Beach near Westport

• Newport , formerly a place for the loading of wood, now consists only of a large hotel with an attached ranch for tourist use.
• Also in Kibesillah , two kilometers further north at the mouth of Kibesillah Creek , there are only a few houses.
• Westport is still the largest settlement in this area, but even here only sixty inhabitants live. Five kilometers north, at the mouth of Howard Creek , is the large Westport-Union Landing State Beach .
• In Hardy eight kilometers north of Westport flowing Hardy Creek in the ocean. There was a post office here from 1902 to 1915. The sawmill burned down and was never rebuilt.
• In 1957 there were still 500 people living in Rockport . Then the place was depopulated and renatured.

In the further course of the coast lies the hardly developed Lost Coast , which was depopulated in the 1930s. The road turns inland here and joins Highway 101 at Leggett .

See also: Lost Coast # Mendocino County

Inland

On Highway 101 and east of it

Inland, US Highway 101 runs from the south through:

Highway 101 in Mendocino County

• Hopland , then to the east, Old Hopland
• Ukiah , the administrative seat of Mendocino County and its largest city with 16,000 inhabitants. To the east is the CDP Talmage , there is the city ​​of ten thousand Buddhas .
• Calpella was founded in 1858 and named after Kalpela, the chief of a nearby Pomo village . Today it is a CDP with 679 inhabitants. California State Route 20 branches off Highway 101 here and heads east to Clear Lake in neighboring Lake County .
• Redwood Valley , a CDP of 1,729 residents east of the highway along the Russian River . Here was the center of a fire in 2017 that destroyed 380 houses. At the northern end of Redwood Valley is the Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery . Further east is the CDP Potter Valley with a population of 646.
• Willits is a town of 5000 people. 5 km to the northwest is Brooktrails , a CDP with an additional 3000 inhabitants.
• Longvale ( UIC ) (abbreviation for "Unincorporated Area")
• Laytonville , east of it lies the CDP Covelo .
• The Chandelier Tree is in Leggett . This is a 96-meter-high coastal sequoia tree , into which a tunnel that can be driven by a car has been carved since 1930.
• Piercy (UIC) got its name after Sam Piercy, who settled here around 1900. There has been a post office here since 1920.
• In Andersonia the Indian Creek flows into the Eel River . The Bear Harbor and Eel River Railroad had linked Bear Harbor with Moody on Indian Creek since 1893 . The route was extended here from 1903 to 1905 and a new sawmill was built around which the town developed, the location was named after the company president Henry Neff Anderson . The railway and sawmill were dismantled in 1921. Anderson's grandsons built a new sawmill in Andersonia in 1947 , and the wood was no longer transported by rail to the port, but by land on US Highway 101. The sawmill was in operation until the local wood supplies were exhausted in 1972.

The highway continues north into Humboldt County . To the east of the highway is the large Mendocino National Forest , which extends beyond the boundaries of the county.

California State Route 128

California State Route 128 begins on the coast between Elk and Albion (see above) . It first leads along the Navarro River and the Navarro River Redwoods State Park . Then it opens up the Anderson Valley and leads there through Navarro , along Henry Woods State Park and through Philo and Boonville . State Route 253 branches off there to Ukiah. The 128 continues through Yorkville and Ingram south out of the county to Cloverdale in Sonoma County . It ends in the Sacramento Valley .

Skunk train

The route of the Skunk train along the Noyo River

The Skunk train the California Western Railroad is a steam-powered museum train between the cities of Fort Bragg on the coast and Willits inland.

The railway line was built in 1885 to transport timber to the sawmill in Fort Bragg. Passenger traffic has existed since 1904. In 1965, the museum began operating as a passenger traffic. Freight traffic, which was the operator's most important source of income until the early 1990s, ended in 2001, museum operations were inactive from 2001 to 2006. After a tunnel collapse in 2013, the remaining stock was questionable, but the line was reopened in the same year. At the moment (2015) the reconnection of Willits by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad is planned for 2020, at which point freight traffic could be resumed.

The route runs along the Noyo River , which it crosses about twenty times, and mostly through otherwise untouched nature. There are hardly any parallel roads, the connection of the two cities by road through State Route 20 follows a completely different route.

More rivers, reservoirs and mountains

Russian River

The largest river inland is the Russian River . It flows parallel to the coast into neighboring Sonoma County to the south , only there it bends and flows to the sea.

The southern branch of the Eel River has its source west of Laytonville and flows parallel to the Russian River but in the opposite direction to the north. It leads through the remote Branscomb and reaches Highway 101 before Legget. From here the river and road run parallel to Humboldt County .

As part of the Potter Valley Project , drinking water has been diverted from the Eel River to the Russian River since 1922.

The Lake Mendocino is a reservoir east of Calpella, which in 1958 by the construction of the Coyote Valley Dam was built for flood control and for drinking water.

The Mendocino Range is the part of the California coastal range that is located in the county, partly in neighboring counties.

Demographic data

growth of population
Census	Residents		± in%
1850	55		-
1860	3967		7,112.7%
1870	7545		90.2%
1880	12,800		69.6%
1890	17,612		37.6%
1900	20,465		16.2%
1910	23,929		16.9%
1920	24,116		0.8%
1930	23,505		-2.5%
1940	27,864		18.5%
1950	40,854		46.6%
1960	51,059		25%
1970	51.101		0.1%
1980	66,738		30.6%
1990	80,345		20.4%
2000	86,265		7.4%
2010	87,841		1.8%
Before 1900 1900–1990 2000 + 2010

According to the 2000 census , Mendocino County had 86,265 people. There were 33,266 households and 21,855 families. The population density was 9 people per square kilometer. The racial the population was composed of 80.76% White, 0.62% African American, 4.76% Native American, 1.20% Asian, 0.15% Pacific Islander, and 8.61% other races Groups; 3.90% were from two or more races. 16.48% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Age pyramid of Mendocino County (as of 2000)

Of the 33,266 households, 31.40% had children and young people under the age of 18 living with them. 48.90% were married couples living together, 11.70% were single mothers. 34.30% were not families. 27.00% were single households and 10.40% had someone living there who was 65 years of age or over. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.04.

For the entire county, the population was composed of 25.50% of residents under 18 years of age, 8.10% between 18 and 24 years of age, 25.60% between 25 and 44 years of age, 27.10% between 45 and 64 years of age 13.60% were 65 years of age or over. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 98.90 males, and for every 100 females aged 18 and over there were 97.10 males.

The median income for a household in the county is $ 35,996 , and the median income for a family is $ 42,168. Males had a median income of $ 33,128 versus $ 23,774 for females. The per capita income was $ 19,443. 15.90% percent of the population and 10.90% of families are below the poverty line. 21.50% of these were under 18 years of age and 7.70% were 65 years of age or older.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ GNIS-ID: 277287. Retrieved on February 22, 2011 (English). 
2. ↑ Towns of the Redwood Coast and Logging Railways (English)
3. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: California . National Park Service , accessed August 27, 2017.
4. ↑ Search mask database in the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 27, 2017.
5. ↑ History Anchor Bay Campground (English)
6. ↑ Mendocino County on historyandhappenings.squarespace.com
7. ^ Preserving the Historic Albion River Bridge at www.albionriverinn.com
8. ↑ Russian Gulch Shingle Mill - Gone and Forgotten (English)
9. ↑ Caspar Homepage (English)
10. ↑ ^{a b} Hometowns: Caspar, California at www.judy-volker.com
11. ↑ Caspar Lumber Company (English)
12. ^ The Western Railroader: Caspar Lumber Company (1966, English), p. 15
13. ↑ Caspar Headlands History (English)
14. ↑ Sea glass beach in California: Only garbage glitters so beautifully Spiegel Online September 9, 2016
15. ↑ The Western Railroader: Glen Blair Redwood Company Cleone tramway , 1961 (English)
16. ^ Fire victims in Redwood Valley still struggling year after tragedy
17. ↑ The California Western Railroad, "The Skunk Train" at www.american-rails.com (English)
18. ↑ US Census Bureau - Census of Population and Housing . Retrieved March 15, 2011
19. ↑ Extract from Census.gov . Retrieved February 28, 2011
20. ↑ Extract from census.gov (2000 + 2010). Accessed April 2, 2012

Web links

Commons : Mendocino County  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce (Engl.)

Coordinates: 39 ° 26 ′  N , 123 ° 26 ′  W