Mendocino

Mendocino was established in 1850 when a ship loaded with San Francisco building supplies wrecked at the Mendocino coast, and the rescued crew found an enormous stand of redwood timber they proceeded to harvest. New England mill workers who came west for the lumber industry settled the town in a familiar architectural style Carpenter Gothic houses, a white New England-style church, and a village green creating a visual anachronism on the California coast. The town was later "discovered" by artists in the 1950s and became an arts colony that attracted painters, photographers, and writers who found the dramatic headland setting compelling. It served as the filming location for several seasons of the TV show Murder She Wrote (as "Cabot Cove, Maine"). Mendocino Headlands State Park surrounds the village on three sides with a trail above bluffs where harbor seals, sea otters, and gray whales can be observed from elevated vantage points. The coastal blowhole in the headland rock is active during large winter swells. Anderson Valley, 30 miles inland via CA-128 through a narrow redwood canyon, produces distinctive Alsatian-influenced wines Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Noir alongside cideries and the Boonville area breweries.