Mendocino Names

by Ron Munson, Mendocino District Chief Ranger

From the mid 1500s, Spanish galleons plied the northern California coast in pursuit of trade in the Phillipine Islands. For close to 300 years a number of Spanish explorers sighted, but never set foot on a coastline often enshrouded in fog and characterized by heavily forested mountains, high cliffs, treacherous shores, and steep-sided ravines cut by swift streams. Historical records indicate that in 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his pilot, Barttolomi Ferrelo, while seeking to map the northern coast and to find a suitable port for servicing the Manila galleons, reached 40deg26'north latitude. They named the point Cape Mendocino in honor of the Viceroy of Mexico and Cabrillo's patron, Antonio de Mendoza.

Fort Bragg was established in 1857 as a military garrison to "oversee the Indian problem". The Mendocino Indian Reservation was created on lands from Noyo River to Ten Mile River, and inland to the first ridge. White settlers were exterminating the Pomo and North Coast Yuki populations either through deliberate murder, kidnapping of children for the slave trade, rampant alcoholism and prostitution, or through inadvertent exposure to diseases to which the Native Americans had no resistance.

Ten years later the few Indians who remained were herded off to the Round Valley Reservation in Covelo. The Mendocino Reservation was disbanded and the lands sold off for white settlement.
Duncan MacKerricher, a Canadian immigrant of Scottish ancestry who had arrived on the Mendocino coast in 1864, (travelling across Panama with his new bride in the midst of the Civil War) worked for a few years in dairy production on the reservation. When the land came on the market, MacKerricher initially purchased 930 acres around Laguna Creek for $1.25 an acre. He was eventually to gain title to more than 1280 acres, on which he raised cattle, hogs, hay and draft horses.

MacKerricher sold off some parcels of land to other settlers, who developed the village of Laguna. In 1883, the US Postal Service opened a post office there, naming it "Kanuk"(a derogatory term for French Canadians). MacKerricher's wife prevailed on the Postal Service to have the name changed to Cleone, a Greek word meaning "gracious and beautiful".

Also in 1883, a wharf and chute was built out on Laguna Point, from which lumber was loaded onto doghole schooners. Remnants of the landing, bollard hooks on the off-shore rocks and pilings for the gravity fed rail line delivering lumber across the lagoon to the point can still be seen today.

Heirs of the MacKerricher family sold 205 acres to the State Park System, opening these lands to public access in 1952. The park currently encompasses 2,473 acres, all of which were part of the Mendocino Indian Reservation. Approximately 1 million visitors come to the park each year.