You name it, Part II
A recent column explored the sources of names on the land fromNeedleRock south to Caspar on theMendocino Coast. This week’s column tells the story of place names fromPine Grove south to Gualala. Plan a road trip and find these interesting places.
Pine Grove probably had a pine tree grove and Russian Gulch was supposed to have been settled by a Russian man who escaped from Fort Ross in Sonoma County.
Little River has a little river and Dark Gulch can be a dark spot on the road. It was sometimes referred to as Big Gulch. Albion honors a legend for the ancient name for England, and Salmon Creek had salmon swimming in it.
Worn out yet? It’s a long drive! South of this is Greenwood/Elk, the town with two names. The folks there wanted their post office to be named after the Greenwood brothers, early settlers in the area, but the name was already assigned by the postal service to a
Sierra town, so they chose Elk. Loggers apparently ate a lot of elkmeat. A sign for Bridgeport is still attached to a ranch that had a bridge
with a port, or landing.
Several spellings exist for Mal Paso, Mall Pass, Mallo Passo, an especially steep loop in the coastal road. The termmeans “bad passage” in Spanish. Then comes Manchester, one of 35 towns in theUSA named by ex-pat Brits.
Today’s Point Arena used to be Punta Arenas, Spanish for a sandy point. A ship was probably wrecked (or built) at Schooner Gulch. South of here were a dozen places with “landing” as part of their title — Saunders, Iversen, Stevens, Steen’s, Collins, Bournes and Robinson — all invisible to tourists as they are now on private property.
Some names, like Rough & Ready, Hardscratch and Nip & Tuck, refer to small and dangerous shipping locations. Arriving at the end of the journey is Gualala, a Pomo native word meaning “water-going-down place.”
Want to know more about our names on the land? David L. Durham wrote “Durham’s PlaceNames of California’s North Coast,” which includes Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino and Trinity Counties (available in digital and print formats). There’s also Erwin G. Gudde’s “California Place Names.”