THE MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST

This is the only national forest in California without a major paved road entering it and no year-around highway crossing over it.   There is Forest Highway 7, a Forest Service gravel road crossing over Mendocino Pass from east to west, but is not open in the winter due to snow.   This road connects state Highway 162 from Willows to Highway 162 in Covelo, a two and half hour drive over 85 miles.   Willows is the Forest Headquarters and known as the Gateway to the Mendocino National Forest.   Hard to believe when Willows is located in the Sacramento Valley with only a view of the Coast Range Mountain to the west some 40 miles away.    One of the most tragic incidents was the loss of 15 firefighters on the Rattlesnake Wildfire in July of 1953 in Grindstone Canyon.  The scar on the landscape from that fire was visible from Willows.   

As a kid I spent many hours looking west at these mountains from our house west of town and wondering what it would be like to see what is over that ridge or up that canyon.   The Willows Ranger District winter office was up stairs in the Willows Post Office, where I got my first  Forest Service map dated 1956.    The District had a summer ranger station at Alder Springs about 45 miles up in the mountains from Willows.    I studied that map until I almost had it memorized.  There were place names on the map that I wanted to explore--Hokey Pokey Ridge, Snow Mountain, Hays Place, Plaskett Meadows, Keller Lake, Jenks Place, Log Springs Guard Station and many more.  

As teenagers a friend and I drove around the Forest in one of my dad's farm pickups exploring different places on that forest map.    We spent 3 or 4 days driving around on forest roads with a 50 gallon barrel of gas with a pump in the pick up bed to keep us going, along with camping gear.   I don't recall seeing many other vehicles, except a Forest Service employee checking camp fires in a campground.   We went as far west as Mendocino Pass and drove more roads than I can remember.    In the summer of 1962 we backpacked four days through the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness Area after my dad dropped us off at a trailhead at a place called Brown's Camp.   From there we hiked to a small lake near South Yolla Bolly Mountain.   The second night was with the fire lookout on Hammerhorn Mountain, and from there down to Elk Lake for a night before hiking out of the wilderness to a Forest Service road where we caught a ride with a Forest Service road engineer to a logging camp where we spent a night.  The next day we caught a ride on a logging truck to Paskenta where one of our parents picked us up.  

Over the last few years most of this Forest has been destroyed from catastrophic wildfires, including summer home tracks, campgrounds, Forest Service guard stations, many road signs and other improvements.  The Willows Ranger District no longer exist and was combined with two other Districts of the five original Districts over the years.   Today there is only three ranger districts and the Forest I once was familiar with is gone, except for the memories.