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Mendocino Village Mendocino Village is located on the Lost Coast, an incredibly beautiful part of California that has been bypassed by all the major highways and has remained unspoiled by urban sprawl. There are two popular ways to get to Mendocino. One way is by driving up the narrow, winding coast on Highway 1, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful drives in the United States. The coast route takes about 5 hours driving at a leisurely pace. Or you can take Highway 101 north from the Golden Gate Bridge through Marin County and Sonoma County to Cloverdale, then take highway 128 over to the coast through Boonville and Anderson Valley. Along the way you can enjoy wine tasting at some of the renowned vineyards along the way. This way takes about three and a half hours. Either way is a wonderful experience. Mendocino was originally built as logging town. San Francisco was built from the redwoods logged along the Big River, then floated down to the river to the mill at Mendocino Mill on Big River beach. The redwood logs were then sawed and put on sailing ships going to San Francisco. All the lumbermen orriginally came over from the State of Maine, and built their homes exactly like they did in Maine. Back in the last half of the 1800's Mendocino was a boom town with dozens of busy bars and brothels to maintain all the lumber's. In the 60's Mendocino was discover by the flower children, and hippies that migrated up from the Haight Asbury district of San Francisco. Mendocino was little more than a ghost town because the logging industry had abandoned their mill. A few locals and fishermen remained. The hippies morphed from communes into business people with restaurants, gift shops, art galleries and tourism associated businesses. Now Mendocino is a booming tourism destination, with some of the finest inns in the country. One of the reasons why Mendocino has survived intact, with no fast food establishments, and chain stores is because of some very thoughtful folks who realized the value of the historical buildings and natural landscape. They got together and lobbied the state to have all the lumber companies land surrounding Mendocino Village taken over by the State Park system. It was once just a jumbled up mess of left over lumbering machinery and debris. Mendocino Village is packed with tourists on weekends, mostly from Bay Area people getting away for a driving holiday. The Big River that empties into Mendocino Bay is one of the most beautiful, totally natural habitat rivers in the country. You can rent a canoe at Catchacanoe on the south side of the river mouth, then spend a relaxing day enjoying the wildlife and birds as you drift up the river on the incoming tide. When the tide turns you can drift back leisurely--or go swimming in one of the pristine pools in the upper part of the river in fresh water.
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