DOUG JOHNSON (Philo Potter):
If you would like to make a donation and cannot come to Pepperwood Pottery in person, simply mail a check or money order directly and payable to: Terese Brendlen P.O. Box 13, Boonville, CA 95415. And thank you in advance for your consideration.
NO KINGS DRAWS BIG CROWD IN BOONVILLE
HALLOWEEN MADNESS AT ANDERSON VALLEY BREWING!
The air is turning crisp, the nights are getting longer, and we’re carving up some crazy times here at the Brewery. All Halloween week long, swing by for pumpkin carving, good beer, and bad ideas with great people.
Then on Halloween night, things get wild:
Costume & Carving Contest at 8 PM
Pizza from Noon-10 PM
DJ 8-AAA spinning 7-11 PM
A new beer (the Beer Formerly Known As…) makes its debut.
And we'll be pouring it all week long!
Prizes, music, and mayhem.
Bring your craziest costume and the energy we expect. The Valley doesn’t do quiet nights (well, not until it gets to be too late).
And the fun keeps rolling into November 1. Details soon.
NAVARRO
by Bob Lorentzen
The word Navarro was probably a Spanish rendering of the Central Pomo name for this place. The northern limit of Central Pomo territory was marked by Navarro Ridge, which towers over the last mile of the river.
The town of Navarro was built around the sawmill there in the early 1860s. Another part of the town grew up on Navarro Ridge, where two hotels put up visitors as early as 1860. Navarro suffered through the boom-and-bust cycle of most north coast settlements. Smeaton Chase found the setting "beautiful — a deep valley with a wide, winding river; the eucalyptus trees and dracaena palms in the gardens showed the owners' expectations of remaining."
But the only visible residents Chase found were a few pigs and chickens. "Most of the buildings were out of plumb; the church leaned at an alarming angle; a loon swimming leisurely in the middle of the stream seemed to certify the solitude of the place."
The resort Navarro-by-the-Sea prospered there during the 1950s, but faded to oblivion again when the lodge closed. (It has since been restored and re-opened.) The beach became a place of controversy in the 1970s, then again in the 1990s.
Until 1994 Navarro Beach was known as the last free beach in California, a place where one could camp or live without paying a fee. But county officials, who had long managed the beach, grew short of maintenance funds and patience as the free beach attracted more and more impoverished people living in broken down campers and trailers. The county gave the beach to the State Parks Department, who agreed to evict the homeless. The eviction process dragged on, with emotions raging on all sides. Finally the community found places for some of the squatters to live and encouraged others to move on.
While you can still camp there, each of the 36 sites now costs $5 a night. You'll have to move on after the two-week limit. Day use is still free. Another controversy centered around Navarro Beach about 25 years ago. A new owner acquired Navarro-by-the-Sea resort in 1970, then tried to block public access through his property.
The Sierra Club filed suit to keep the beach open, resulting in a landmark decision by the California Supreme Court. The court ordered the beach opened, ruling that, since the road had been open to the public for more than five years, "implied dedication" had established the route as public access. The owner was still trying to regulate who used the beach in 1973. The sign at the parking lot read: “Casual attire is acceptable provided it is clean. Bare feet, patches, torn undershirts, faded clothing and untidy appearance NOT ACCEPTABLE.” No bare feet allowed on the beach?
This story offers more than meets the eye, as is often the case with local politics. When the utopian dreams of the hippie community in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury came crashing down in a haze of drug abuse and crime after 1967's "Summer of Love," many counterculture city residents began an exodus to the quiet, unpopulated and affordable life along the north coast. New left politicos and war resisters were attracted to the coast too. Some of the immigrants came with enough money to buy the cheap land then available. Others came only with bedroll and backpack.
In those days many a new arrival to the Mendocino Coast spent their first winter camping in a "stump house" —plastic sheets or boards thrown across the top of a goose pen redwood stump along the Navarro River and elsewhere.
Some old-timers saw these long-haired immigrants in tie-dyed and tattered clothing as undesirable aliens, taking any step possible to keep them out, including calling the building department on their ramshackle shacks. While many urban dropouts moved on or returned to the city, many more found a way to stay.
The test of time proved that many of these counterculture people fit very well into the independent, self-sufficient lifestyle for which Mendocino County residents were known. The new arrivals became fishermen, shop keepers, teachers, lawyers, therapists, journalists, even loggers; they established theater companies and inns, fought for political power, built houses (some to code and some not), bore and raised children, fought for better schools.
In short they lived their dreams and made their compromises, but they found in Mendocino County a land where they could survive, a land that made their hearts sing. While far from everyone who settled here in the late '60s and early '70s considered themselves hippies (the term has little meaning today anyway), most new arrivals came seeking refuge from the rat race, bringing high ideals and expectations about what country life offered.
(‘The Glove Box Guide to the Mendocino Coast,’ 1995)
BOONVILLE
by Bob Lorentzen
Highway 128 traffic is supposed to slow to 30mph to pass through Boonville, the unofficial capital of Anderson Valley. The upper valley of the Navarro River once supported a large population of Northern Pomo people, who thrived on abundant acorns and fish in the mild climate. The Pomo named the area Taa-bo-tah, meaning “long valley.”
Most of the native population was forced onto the Mendocino Indian Reservation near Fort Bragg in 1856. In 1851 the first white settlers came, naming Anderson Valley after their leader, Walter Anderson. After he first saw the valley, Anderson announced his intention to move to “the Garden of Eden.” In the next six years 20 more families settled in Anderson Valley, many of them of Scottish or Irish descent. One was W.W. Boone, a relative of Daniel Boone.
The valley's largest town was named for W.W. after he bought the principal store (from early San Francisco merchants Levi and Strauss). The burg had previously been called Kendall City. Boonville and Philo sprang into existence around 1862. The down-river settlements of Christine, Wendling and Navarro soon followed. By 1900 about 100 families had settled in these parts.
(The Glove Box Guide to the Mendocino Coast, 1995)
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