Mendocino County
History
History of Mendocino County California - Alley, Bowen & Co., San Francisco, 1880
BRIDGEPORT.
Beginning at the southern boundary of the township and passing northward, up the coast, the first place we come to is Bridgeport, which, although it can scarcely be classed in the catalogue of towns, as regards its size, must necessarily be noticed under this caption. The starting of the town was the construction of a chute at this point in 1870, by C. Hoag. In 1878, this chute was rebuilt, it having been washed away the year before, during a heavy storm, of which there were several during that winter, which tried very severely the strength of the chutes and wharfs along the coast. At the present time, there is one store and one
blacksmith shop at the place. The post-office is known as Miller, another one of those peculiar freaks which will come over American people from time to time, giving the town one name and the post-office another. It is a good farming and grazing section around the place, and there is also a great amount of tan-bark, cord-wood, fence-posts, and railroad ties shipped over the chute every year. R. D. Kidder is the postmaster, and the chute is at present owned by Mrs. Eliza Fields.
CUFFEY'S COVE.
There are two reports current as to how this little town came by its cognomen, both of which we will relate, and leave the reader to take his choice or to search for another, and perhaps truer version. The first story is to the effect, that in an early day, a craft of some kind, on which there were a party of prospectors, was sailing up the coast, and when abreast of this place, a huge grizzly was descried taking a sun-bath on the rocks. The craft was "hove to," and the anchor dropped in this bight or inlet, and the men went ashore, and soon dispatched his bruin's lordship, and from that time on, the place began to be known as Cuffey's Cove, referring to the bear that had been slain there. The other legend which has come down to the present time, is to the effect that the early settlers found a negro here when they came to the place, whom they donned with the title of Cuffey, and since that time the place has had its present name. As stated above Frank Farmer, better known as " Portugee Frank," was the first permanent settler here, and it is not known just when he came in, or what motive impelled him to locate here, and live so far away from civilization. Soon after him came the Greenwood Brothers, who built the first real house in the township, and settled on the stream which still bears their patronymic. The town is now quite a busy little village, consisting of about fifty buildings, one church and one school-house. The business interests are represented by one general merchandise store, two variety stores, one livery stable, one blacksmith shop, one hotel, one meat market; one shoe shop, and six saloons. There are also four chutes here, over which pass, annually, immense quantities of bark, wood, posts, pickets, ties and lumber. When all these enterprises are working their complement of men, there is no busier place to be found on the coast, and none where money is more plentiful. One man, J. S. Kimball, ships annually, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand ties, and has on his pay-roll, from one hundred and fifty to three hundred men during the busy season. Frank Retter is the postmaster and telegraph operator, and J. S. Kimball is Wells, Fargo & Co.'s agent.
Catholic Church.—St. Mary's "Star of the Sea" Catholic Church, at Cuffey's Cove, was built in the present year (1880) by Rev. Father J. Sheridan, at a cost of about $3,000. The style is simple gothic, with an arched ceiling throughout the whole building. There are three aisles in the nave, and three altars in the chancel, together with a choir gallery inside and above the front entrance. The size of the church is seventy-six by thirty-six feet, with a twenty-two-foot ceiling. It has a spire which is twelve by twelve at its base, and eighty-four feet to the top of its cross.
NEVARRA.
The next town that we come to as we proceed up the coast is Nevarra, and it is not very much of a town either, although its good citizens are bouyant with hope for the future of their village. The first settler was Charles Fletcher, a staunch pattern of the genus pioneer, who staked his tent on the south side of the river away back in the infant '50ies, and, having constructed a dug-out canoe began, like Charon of fabled story, to paddle travelers that way across the river to the confines of an unknown and yetto-be-discovered country. And right here he has since remained, and is to-day living on the same little plat of ground that his shanty then occupied, and is one of the few links which still remain to bind the almost forgotten past with the living, active, present. In time the mill was built here, and shortly after the bridge, and quite a settlement sprang up around the hardy old-timer, and his avocation was gone. There is a general merchandise store, a blacksmith shop and a saloon on the "Flat," as the locality of the mill site is called, locally. On the "Ridge," as the bluff on the north side of the river is called, there is one hotel, one store, and one livery stable, and one or two other buildings. Charles Wintzer is postmaster and agent for Wells, Fargo & Co., and F. A. Walton is telegraph operator. The stage line from Cloverdale to Mendocino City comes out to the coast at this point.
Catholic Church.—St. Patrick's Catholic Church at Nevarra was erected in 1866, at a cost of about $800. Its size is about forty by twenty, with a ceiling fourteen feet in height. This point is supplied by the Reverend Fathers who are placed upon the Mendocino mission work.
" NEVARRA."
Under this caption Mr. Charles H. Shinn, in the Overland Monthly, in 1874, has given to the world the following beautiful poem, descriptive of a passage on board a schooner from Nevarra to San Francisco—"the Mistress of the Western Seas" :—
"Fair seas grown silver under dappled skies,
Brown shores in evening shadows waning-slow,
While on broad hills the reverential pines
Stand with sad faces bent to watch us go.
How the seas call, and toss their misty hands;
How the winds sweeten with a breath of fir
Blown from the far woods; how the, grasses stir
With their low sympathies, and wordless signs!
Alas! we mar the wave-perfected sands,
And turn sad feet to where the Ino lies!
Broad, lifted sails; a stormy, quivering keel!
The rocks slip past, the riven surges beat,
The still shores darken, all the sacred trees
Wave low farewells, the grassy slopes repeat
Their dim song woven by the northern wind;
And the smoke-curtained mills lie low and dun
In the great trees, the red sword of the sun
Smites from the warm west through the smokey seas,
The air drops flame, the leaning hills behind
Draw back from rush of fire and ring of steel!
Wind-trembling, moaning deep!
We turn to thee
With the hill-dust above our tired eyes,
Now let us feel thy heart throb sweetly low
With thine illimitable ministries,
And thy calm musings of eternal things;
Or lean above the music of thy smiles
To hear the palm-song of the pleasant isles.
Were it not well to drift forever so,
And dream forever under shining wings,
Above thy yearning minstrelsies, dear sea?
All night our vessel pants through fields of foam,
All night the steersman holds the trembling wheel;
We round Arenas, with the holy light
Set on the gray rock as a crystal seal;
We hear the blind waves storm her silent base,
And her lamp turns in noiseless ways of peace,
And strong men sailing over treacherous seas
Gaze out across the danger-circled night,
And feel a far gleam touch them in the face
With all the love of land, and light of home.
Dim seas of dreaming, full of under calls,
And faint, far sighs, more clear than silver reeds,
Sweep round us, lost ones, in unmeasured night,
Yet glad with wonders audible, and needs
Made beautiful with speech! Uplifted wings
Shade the dark seas, and bear us swiftly through
The shadows of the star-sown fields of blue,
Fed by cloud-rivers with continuous light,
And chords of song, and of diviner things,
Drawn sweetly down in starry waterfalls.
So we sail southward, by glad breezes blown
All the still hours; we pass the Farallones,
Encircled with unceasing lines of spray,
And brooding ever with perpetual moans
And wings of sea-birds.—
Lo! the riven Gate,
With the sun on the walls of Alcatraz!
Through the twin cliffs with straining sail we pass,
And round to moorings in a peaceful bay,
Whereon her sand-hills, girt with queenly state,
The mistress of the western seas lies lone."
SALMON CREEK.
This is a small village which is mostly the outgrowth of the lumbering industry. There is one store, one hotel, one shoe shop, and one blacksmith shop. There is quite a little village of mill buildings about the place, but nothing very permanent or attractive.
ALBION.
This is another milling town with but little or nothing in it outside of the mill buildings, but of these there are a goodly number, and the town in its glory presented a neat and handsome appearance. To the south of the place, a hotel has been built, and other rudimentary indications of a town site are visible, which will probably, should it ever pass out of its swaddlings, be called "Albion Ridge."
LITTLE RIVER.
As we pass on to the northward we come to this little village, which lies on the north side of the stream known by the same name. The first settlers here were Lloyd and Samuel Bell, and the Moore brothers, who "took up" or "entered " the land here. In 1856 W. H. Kent purchased the Bell tract; and until 1864 the place was known as Bell's Harbor and Kent's Landing. In August of the last-named year, Messrs. Stickney, Coombs, and Reeves began hewing timber for their mill, and on the evening of October 15th, of that year the whistle sounded a triumphant blast that rang out through the redwoods the knell of their doom. On the 7th of the following December the first schooner—the Josephine Willcutt arrived under charge of Capt. James Harlow, and by some mismanagement set the bad example of going ashore, but fortunately it sustained but little damage. The first lumber was shipped in January 1865, and during that year there were thirty-eight schooners loaded at that point for the San Francisco market, which is probably as good a record as can be shown by any mill on the coast. January 17, 1875, the steamer Fideleter of the North Pacific Coast Line commenced making weekly trips from San Francisco northward, and calling in here each way, since which time that company has kept a steamer on the line. In 1865 a school-house was erected and during the first term of school there was only an average attendance of nine scholars. In 1877 the population had so increased that the average attendance was raised to seventy. To go back for a moment to 1854, we find that in that year a Mr. Baldwin erected a house where R. Stickney now has his elegant residence, which was the second house in the vicinity. The third house was erected on the town site, and was located about where I. Steven's house now stands. The mill company opened a general merchandise store in connection with their business in 1865, which was the first enterprise of the kind in the place.
At present the town consists of upwards of fifty buildings, comprising dwellings and business houses. There are two stores, two hotels, one blacksmith shop, and one livery stable in the town. There are two chutes, which serve as channels extending from the land into the sea, and through which passes the lumber product of the mill,. and also the other exports common to the coast. There is also a wharf which was constructed in 1876. Isaac Stevens is the postmaster, and Jasper Gray telegraph operator.
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.