How Mendocino County Went To Pot: Memories of Life in Mendocino Redwood Country in the Last Half of the 1900s

By DENNIS TAVARES

The author is a retired forester and conservationist who studied forest science at the University of California at Berkeley and subsequently made his home on the Mendocino Redwood Coast. This is his true story of the effort to establish a sustainable forest and fishing community in western Mendocino Count

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Nov 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684865734

DENNIS TAVARES

'"When we accept mankind's dominance and the mutuality of man in nature and nature in man, then we can begin to move toward comprehension of our proper role as co-determinors of what is to be, and also our need for self discipline.'Through detailed research and firsthand observations, Tavares reveals the rise and eventual decline of lumber and fishing trade in the area alongside the rise of drug culture and calls for environmental preservation... readers will find many of his observations relevant and an interesting counterpoint to preservationist ideals."-THE US REVIEW OF BOOKS

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How Mendocino County Went To Pot

Copyright © 2023 by Dennis Tavares. All rights reserved.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023920145

ISBN 978-1-68486-571-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-572-7 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-573-4 (Digital)

25.09.23

MENDOCINO COUNTY

SCALE 1 INCH = 12.7 MILES AREA = 2.2 MILLION ACRES

Contents

Prologue

How Mendocino County Went To Pot - Introduction

Pre 1950 - The Good Old Days

The 1950s In The Forest Industry - Prelude To Empires

The 1950s In The Fishing Industry - The End Of Sleepy Noyo

The 1950s On The Culture Front - The Seedbed For Flower Children

The 1960s In The Forest Industry - Union Lumber’s Empire

The 1960s In The Fishing Industry - Big Money, Heartache, And The Sea

The 1960s On The Culture Front - Raising A Whole New Kind Of Hell

The Early 1970s Through 1973 In The Forest Industry - The Boise Boys Hit The Wall

The Early 1970s Through 1973 In The Fishing Industry - The Ultimate Ocean Predators

The Early 1970s Through 1973 On The Culture Front - Devilweed Is The Moneyweed

1974 Through The Late 1970s And The 1980s In The Forest Industry - The Return Of Big Blue

1974 Through The Late 1970s And The 1980s In The Fishing Industry - Disaster In The Open Commons Sea

1974 Through The Late 1970s And The 1980s On The Culture Front - Getting High On One’s Self

The 1990s In The Forest Industry - Fatal Strategic Errors And Collapse

The 1990s In The Fishing Industry - Downsizing The Fleet

The 1990s On The Culture Front - Redwood Summer And The Aztec Mafia

2000 And Beyond— The Beckoning Future In The Forest Industry - Watching Two Bottom Lines

2000 And Beyond—The Beckoning Future In The Fishing Industry - Stop Signs In The Ocean

2000 And Beyond—The Beckoning Future - Enough Is Enough

Glossary General Social Definitions

Forestry Definitions

Sawmill Definitions

Fishery Definitions

Sources

Prologue

The grey winter skies feel the chill winds blow

Then sun rises high with its warming glow

And the land is wakened from cold and snow

Now the loggers go out to green hills about

And the song of their laboring saws rings out

The seas also change as the tides come and go

The tide pools show first that the sea is low

Then high tide floods by the moon’s strong tow

As the fishermen eagerly cross the bar

To their sea hunting runs in places afar

These rhythms are part of a symphony

Nature’s movement in time and harmony

Which makes for all mankind a place secure

So that these patterns of life can endure

For as long as the warm bright sun shines down

On hills clothed in green sylvan majesty

For as long as the osprey feed their young

From the bountiful, blue, and windy sea

For as long as winds blow and clouds scud along

And the heavens shine bright with mystery

Dennis B. Tavares

How Mendocino County Went To Pot - Introduction

These are my memories of life in the latter half of the 1900s in the timber country of coastal Mendocino County, as well as what happened during that time in the forest and fishing industries and in society generally. This was the period when the local forest products industry consolidated into a few large operations. These either eventually went bankrupt or overcut and sold off their Mendocino County holdings. The fishing industry went through a similar history of peak and decline. Many large boats, both domestic and foreign entered the fishery, leading to overfishing and ultimately to decline in total catch. Economic science teaches that dysfunctions such as these always have human costs, and human costs always involve economic costs that are borne by ever yone.

That is why each of us should have a lively curiosity about the why and the how of our successes and our failures, both individual and collective. We are all on a learning curve and life is short. The sad side of history is that too many generations end up being a warning rather than a good example to their posterity. Part of the corrective in an ever changing world is to understand what went on before and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. Hopefully, this story will enable more farsighted decisions in the future and a better grounded legacy for posterity than my generation left. For in my time in this place, too much was squandered and far too little was conserved for future use.

Back in 1950, there were some 44 stationary sawmills of significant size scattered over the Mendocino coast (see appendix table 1 summary). Each had a tepee burner for wood waste. In addition, there were hundreds of portable sawmills on skids or on wheels scattered throughout the ranches of the county. Now, in 2011, there are only three sawmills operating. And there are over 1/2 million acres without an adequate number of larger trees to produce maximum sustained yield. Nonetheless, this land contains many billions of board feet of timber, much of it in smaller and medium size trees. Much of this great expanse of some of the world’s most productive forest land no longer has an adequate flow of capital from harvesting to allow adequate reinvestment of capital for management and maintenance of forest infrastructure.

There was once a large number of salmon surface trollers and many big bottom dragging and middle depth trawling boats in the fishery, all happily harvesting the bounty of the sea. Now many of the boats have gone to other ports or are idled, and not enough people are at sea to observe what is happening to the ocean. This is not the history of a healthy and sustainable forest and ocean based community. Consequently, Mendocino’s redwood coast faces an uncertain future; one more uncertain than it needed to be. The story that follows will trace events in the Mendocino forest product and fishing industries and in California culture as separate themes, even though they were all part of the same big picture and were intertwined. Mendocino County’s recent history is but a thread of what was unraveling all across America.

This time was one of great social change and turmoil. It was in various ways like some earlier days of American history. There was moral and philosophical confrontation as in America’s Civil War. There were people on the move as in the intrepid migration to settle the West. There was also the stress of change such as accompanied America’s shift to an industrialized nation. Many who lived the late 1900s with me have died or are getting old and incapacitated, so there is concern that their experience and their story will be lost. And it is a great story indeed; a tale of interesting characters and tumultuous times. It is a story of successful enterprise that linked redwood country to America. It is also a poignant story of the best laid plans of men gone haywire. It is a story of things done right at the right time. It is also a story of damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Depending on where a person was in the scheme of things, it was the best of times or the worst of times, all at the same time. Above all, it is a story of the interplay of the old culture of America being overrun by the headstrong children of the men of the Second World War. It is a twist of fate that many men fought and died in that war specifically to preserve America and its culture; and yet some of their surviving companions would bring forth a generation who would conflict with that very same culture. And that posterity would come to occupy American corporate boardrooms and executive suites, government agency leadership, as well as the commune busses of counterculture folks.

The characters comprising the story are the people who shared my life amid the big timber hills and ocean waters of Mendocino County: fellow workers, neighbors, kindred souls, and passing acquaintances. Recently I have talked to a number of them, reliving bygone days, which confirmed the timeline of my memories. Some contributed anecdotal material that helped enrich the story. However, the social and interpretive commentary is mostly my own view on the events of those days. If what you are about to read gets in your craw, then talk to me, and don’t bother my friends. If you enjoy the story, then much of the credit goes to my wife, Claire, and professional editor, Carolyn Lemon, for their extensive editing work. Those who helped flesh out this bit of history are: Tommy Ancona, Mike Anderson, Jan Andre, Bob Ballard, Dick Benedetti, Don Bischop, Beth Bosk, Chuck Ciancio, Bobby Cox, Cecelia Cox, Betty Cox, Ernest Figueiredo, Carl Force, Fred Greene, Alan Holmes, Fred Holmes, John Kershaw, Tom Kisliuk, Marc Jameson, Paul Johnson, Dave Koski, Martha Land, Carolyn Lemon, Marilyn Leroy, John McDonald, Kirsten MacGregor, Harry Merlo, Bill Mertle, Caroline Pomeroy, Bob Reid, Peter Ribar, Enrique Quinonez, Ruth Sparks, Jack Sweeley, Audrey Tyson, Del Wade, Bill Westfall, and all my family.

We all look at things through the lens of a certain value system, which may be different than that of people of the past. This can make it difficult to comprehend their story. Sometimes words have different meanings to different people or in different times. These roadblocks to understanding diminish the collective experience and make future mistakes more probable. Certainly this is something we want to avoid. An example of this difficulty involves a friend whose great, great grandfather came to California in the days of the big ranchos. His ancestor was William G. Dana, cousin of noted author Richard Henry Dana, who together worked the Southeast Asia trade and sailed back to California. He left Protestantism for the Catholic Church in order to marry a California don’s daughter, and the couple received a large land grant at Nipomo, California, part of which is still the family ranch. William Dana had to kill a bear to protect the livestock that were his family’s livelihood. It was most likely a grizzly bear, which were quite numerous in early southern California. My friend says his ancestor had a proper understanding of his place in the world which consisted of dominion over nature coupled with stewardship responsibility before God. He had the only kind of stewardship instinct that is true and primal: taking care of one’s family as first priority. People of a radical environmentalist mindset, upon hearing this story recently, condemned William Dana for not acting as a steward of nature by letting the grizzly live because it was not attacking the family directly. Either my friend or the radical group is misusing the word steward. Such a difference in understanding is not insignificant; the fortunes of the world turn on the meaning of words. I think the Dana view is correct because its concept of stewardship is ancient and not mutable. It will always be right for a father to protect his innocent family. But it is possible that saving a grizzly bear is a wrong thing to do in certain circumstances, such as when the bear is a danger. Even the likable works of Walt Disney helped to get it all mixed up when they too often portrayed nature as benign and cuddly.

In order to help alleviate this problem, I have included in this book, before the appendix, a glossary. It contains those terms and concepts used throughout the story which may be unfamiliar to some readers, or which may have multiple meanings to others. So to keep things clear, they should be defined as I understand their meaning, because they are a key to understanding events in this story of Mendocino County.

It will be very helpful to the reader to scan the glossary before embarking on the story itself or check the glossary whenever encountering an unknown term. There are two concepts that are so central to the story that I want to define them at the outset.

Conservation refers to a philosophy of wise use of natural resources that extends the life of the resources and makes their benefits last. The concept does allow for setting aside areas in an unused state if they have no great productive value such as limited swamp, desert, or high mountain alpine areas. Conservation seeks to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It has a communitarian aspect to it that values and seeks to integrate work, recreation, and science in all environments. It makes sense to work intelligently and to practice full use and conservation of natural resources in order to avoid the hard times that go with living on the edge of want and poverty. Conservation is the natural philosophy of ordinary people who depend on an active economy for work opportunities.

Preservation is a philosophy of natural resource use directly opposed to conservation. It promotes setting aside extensive areas as wilderness in which no productive uses are allowed. Preservation has an individualistic aspect to it. Preservation is the natural philosophy of people who are more interested in nature than in people’s material needs and who want to enjoy nature in relative seclusion in a wilderness setting.

I will tell this history from my own perspective, which arises from a conservationist world view, and I will use tried and true logic to judge the events I saw. Radical environmentalism or preservationist ideas have not found a welcome home in my memories. This is not because they caused the collapse of Mendocino’s forest and fishing industries. They did not, but they were not helpful either. Other debatable and short term ways of thinking and judging, both public and private, were the big culprits in this story, as we shall see.

Pre 1950 - The Good Old Days

The story of the last half of the 1900s in coastal Mendocino County on the rugged north coast of California flowed from and was conditioned by earlier days. One needs to know something of the previous 150 years in order to understand fully and appreciate what followed. Much has been recorded in print and pictures about this earlier time period on the coast, of which a brief summary fol lows.

Originally, the land belonged to what we now call the Native Americans or American Indians. But they neither saw themselves as Americans, nor as owners of the land in the sense that Europeans understood these terms. Their culture was a matrix of taboos that came into use over the course of the last 10,000 years. The taboos formed the basis of a personal ethic governing relations with nature and other people. This ethic would prove inscrutable to many modern minds. The Indians believed they were children of the Earth and members of an extended family called a tribe. They could not see themselves as individuals apart from the others in their group. Not all of them foresaw and fully comprehended the taking of their land as permanent. Additionally, because their lifestyle was selfsufficient, the Indians generally had no concept of improving themselves. They had no sense of a self-determined destiny as had the Europeans who would come into their world. The native people were in a way innocent as the less powerful are often innocent.

They had not the organized numbers to defend their ancestral rights to the land. No human group is given immunity from the universal law of competition that governs all the world of life. It is a brutal but true fact that nature abhors a vacuum, which has its corollary in the white man’s law that possession is nine tenths of the law. And unlike in Mexico, where many of the native people intermarried with Europeans to create a mixed race culture, most here did not wed their religion and destiny to that of their more driven newcomers. The western Indians lived by the ancient ways of hunting and gathering in a bountiful wilderness home; it was something they could not conceive of changing. Their unbroken tribal memory of this way of life stretched back thousands of years.

The Europeans, in contrast, saw the wilderness as something to be transformed, as a threshold to prosperity and the future. The two radically different cultures met in a clash between the past and the future. Sadly, there was violence and hatred enough on both sides to create a long legacy of ill will. The meek often do not inherit the Earth in the short run, and so the land passed into the hands of the energetic and powerful newcomers. The future won as it always does.

This is how the land transfer took place. The long standing conflict between Mexico and the American settlers moving into Mexican Texas territory in the early 1800s eventually erupted in war. The 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War, with Mexico ceding all of its northernmost lands to the United States. This area included almost all of the present day states of California, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The provable land titles of the Mexican citizens in these areas were protected by the treaty so that they could stay in their homes and become citizens of the United States. This was followed by the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States bought the land between the Gila and Rio Grande Rivers. This fixed the southern boundary of the United States at its present position.

In subsequent years, the government of the United States pursued a policy of moving the native Indian tribes onto reservations scattered throughout the West. By 1857, the federal government had established on the Mendocino coast an Indian reservation of approximately 25,000 acres covering a large area from about Hare Creek south of the Noyo River to north of the Ten Mile River. It had a short life because Indian numbers rapidly declined due to runaways and European diseases to which the Indians had no immunity. Remaining Indians who could be rounded up were taken to the Round Valley reservation in inland Mendocino County. The Fort Bragg reservation was then parceled up and sold off to local settlers.

The immigrant European settlers of the vast new territory sought to build up their families, businesses, and communities for their own good and the good of their posterity. They worked hard and intelligently in pursuit of their happiness, and many succeeded in large measure. In 1850, at the dawn of the white settlement of California, and at the end of the American Indian era, only a few newcomers inhabited what would come to be called the Mendocino Coast. But then subsequent intruders came with a set purpose on their minds. They were going to convert the trees to money or go bust trying. In only 30 years, by 1880, there were sawmills on many homesteads, creeks, and rivers. They ranged in size from the small and the crude to the large and the industrial. There were some 20 little towns along the coast producing lumber, tanbark, railroad ties, and food. Inland, burning of hardwood trees and brush along the Eel River and Russian River opened up areas for grazing and agriculture. A few towns sprang up beside these rivers, and began to grow as commercial centers. Initially, the newcomers simply started cutting the forest by claiming squatter’s rights, a variation on the idea of possession being nine tenths of the law. With free raw material, they knew their little enterprises would grow.

The primary reason for rapid settlement and economic growth of the new territory after 1880 was the passage by the United States Congress of the Timber and Stone Act in 1879. This law allowed for timber and mining claims to be filed to secure private title to federal land for a purchase price of $2.50 per acre. There was reputed to be some abuse of this law which allowed vast tracts of timber to be accumulated by wealthy persons and corporations as well as ordinary settlers. The army troops stationed on the coast, mostly to protect Indians from whites, and also sea captains and their crews carrying cargo along the coast, were among those who filed for land. They also passed information on to others on where the good sites were. Title to the whole coast passed to private hands very quickly. Some family surnames involved include many familiar to today’s inhabitants: Dollar, Ford, Jackson, Johnson, McPherson, Meiggs, Plummer, Sage, Stewart, Thompson, Weatherby, and Williams. And there were many other prospering families in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the big cities back east that amassed large holdings of redwood forest land that rivaled the old Spanish land grant ranchos of early California.

Thus, when President Theodore Roosevelt and forester Gifford Pinchot spread maps on the floor in the White House around 1904– 1905 to select areas from all the western U.S. for inclusion in a new national forest reserve conservation system, there was only a small bit of north coast forestland left under federal title. That is why they could not create a Mendocino Redwood National Forest in this expansive area of temperate rain forest, an otherwise logical place for a national forest . Much later, in the early 1930s during the great economic depression, the federal government attempted to buy up the cheap land of the redwood region in order to create a Redwood National Forest. The plan never succeeded. Private ownership of the coast meant that investors could now be assured of private title to a timber supply when they built a sawmill on the coast. That is why young C. R. Johnson in 1881, and in ensuing years, could return to his family and friends in the Great Lakes states forest industry to successfully round up investment in his dream of building up a major lumber enterprise and a town.

Over time, as the local old growth forest was depleted, many small sawmills closed, and most of the towns died out. Cutover land was often sold off, creating many small ranches along the coast. Tree growing is a slow process, and no one on the coast at that time could imagine tree farms or sustained yield forest products operations. The forest seemed endless, so trees had little value. And the land had even less value when the trees were gone. It was man’s labor and the income from buyers that was valuable and important. The lack of a good natural harbor prevented most towns from prospering further as fishing ports. Their inhabitants either stayed put as rural livestock operators and farmers, or they moved to surviving towns with good ports. This is why C. R. Johnson’s Fort Bragg, which he wisely founded on a good potential harbor, became the center of coastal forest products and fishing activity. Fort Bragg had a limited growth potential because of topography, and has remained a little center of rough civilization on the narrow coastal shelf between the vast wild sea and the redwood forest. The company C. R. Johnson founded there was the result of uniting his lumber company with the Plummer and White Company, which had a sawmill on the Noyo River. Hence the new corporate business was given the name Union Lumber Company. Thus began a long period of sustained cut from the old growth forest commencing in the late 1800s and continuing until the 1970s, some 30 years after the Second World War.

Repeated burning of forest reproduction was done early on in an effort to convert some of the cut-over land to sheep or cattle grazing, or to apple orchards. Frank Tunzi of Comptche told me that one latter day practice was to roll burning car tires filled with fuel soaked rags down a slope to ignite a hillside. Such large grazing areas were cleared by fire that Mendocino County once had many flocks of sheep together numbering in the millions. The earliest aerial photos of the coast were taken for forest management work in the 1950s. Even at this relatively recent date, the photos showed much more open land than now exists. But nature would gradually change this. The redwood stumps kept sprouting to the dismay of ranchers, and Douglas fir and grand fir trees seeded back thickly on steep north facing slopes, and thus new forest was gradually reclaiming much of the original forest area. The existence of the thriving forest industry of late is thus