The best cycling routes around Point Arena

Shirt smooth trail branching off the paved road to a great viewpoint

Boonville is a charming small town in the Anderson Valley wine-growing area and is home to several wine-tasting rooms, a brewery, a craft distillery, shops, and galleries. It's the perfect spot to use as a base for exploring the area's beautiful redwood forests and rolling hills that line the Mendocino coast.

This short trail is really more of a lookout, offering panoramic views of the village of Mendocino from the bluffs south of the mouth of the Big River. The Mendocino Bay Viewpoint, opened to the public by the Mendocino Land Trust in 1996, was the first public access easement accepted and opened by a nonprofit organization in California. The Mendocino Land Trust has been the path for other nonprofit organizations to open and manage public access trails along the California coast. The Mendocino Bay Overlook is a great place for picnics, plein air painting and whale watching. It is also a popular wedding venue. Request information about planning a special event here.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) played a major role in the construction of Highway 1 along the California coast in the 1930s - most famously along the Big Sur coast. WPA crews also worked on Highway 1 in Mendocino County, where they built three new bridges - the Jack Peters Creek Bridge, the Russian Gulch Bridge and the Jug Handle Creek Bridge. The Jack Peters Creek Bridge, completed in 1939, is a concrete bridge, 223 feet long with a central span of 90 feet. Like the others, the Jack Peters Creek Bridge has a date stamp but no other marker of its provenance with the WPA. According to the Ukiah Dispatch Democrat, the cost of the bridge was $25,000.

Russian Gulch State Park is a California state park in coastal Mendocino County, California, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Mendocino and 7 miles (11.2 km) south of Fort Bragg.

The Big River rises in the California Coast Mountains 36 km east of Mendocino. The river flows through the mountains with numerous river loops, mainly in a westerly direction. The South Fork Big River flows into the river from the left and the North Fork Big River flows into the river from the right. The Mendocino Headlands State lies on the lower reaches of the Big River. The river flows into Mendocino Bay, a small bay on the Pacific coast, near Mendocino. The river drains an area of 469 km².

Agate Beach is two miles of solitude and splendor with fantastic beachcombing. Beachcombing is just one of the attractions of this long, secluded beach. For some, Agate Beach is the ideal place to observe wildlife. Whales, sea lions, and numerous shore birds share the beach with humans. The occasional purposeful flight of brown pelicans along the beach is just one of the many natural treasures to be experienced. With a sharp ebb and flow, Agate Beach is definitely not suitable for swimming, and visitors are advised to exercise the utmost caution. Never turn your back to the waves or trust that you can stand in what you think is a small wave. It's not worth the risk. But Agate Beach is far from the water and is a perfect place to contemplate the breathtaking power of the sea and fantasize about the exotic locations far beyond the western horizon.

The Schooner Gulch area was inhabited by the central Pomo Indians. Russian and native Alaskan hunters were active in the area beginning around 1812, and Mexicans owned land in the area by the 1840s. Scottish immigrant John Galloway founded the Schooner Gulch settlement and established a wood milling business there in 1866. The Galloway mill only operated until 1868, but other mills operated there until the late 19th century, such as a mill owned by an A. Saunders (of quite large size, at 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) per day), built in 1875, Burned down in 1880 but was rebuilt this year. The Galloway School District was officially founded in 1874. Galloway School, a small school (never more than 40 students), was founded the same year and operated until 1936. The land around it was converted to farmland in the 1940s and is now forest. In 1912, Russian Baptist immigrants bringing steam-powered heavy equipment from Point Arena to their colony further south were crossing a bridge then spanning Schooner Gulch when the bridge collapsed under the weight of its eight-ton lead engine. Colonist Nicholas Pogsikoff was killed and buried at this site, but his grave is now lost. Schooner Gulch timber, like all timber in Mendocino County, was shipped by sea. Typically, the small dwellings that grew up around these mills were abandoned when the mills ran out of readily available wood and closed.