Spyrock, California

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Spyrock
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Spyrock
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Spyrock
Spyrock (the United States)
Coordinates: 39°52′36″N123°26′38″W / 39.87667°N 123.44389°W / 39.87667; -123.44389
Country United States
State California
County Mendocino County
Elevation
[1]
850 ft (259 m)

Spyrock (formerly, Spy Rock) is an unincorporated community of ranches in Mendocino County, California. [1] [2] It is located around Spyrock Road, which runs east of Highway 101 to the Eel River and Northwestern Pacific Railroad. [3] [2]

It is named after Spy Rock, a 540 ft landmark hill on the east side of the river, and The Wildlands Conservancy operates the 5,832 acres Spyrock reserve in the area. [4] [5] [6]

A post office operated at Spyrock from 1910 to 1911, and from 1915 to 1967. [7] Spy Rock Elementary School located on Spy Rock Road is in Laytonville Unified school district, [8] although Spy Rock previously had its own school district. [9]

There was a station on the railroad named Spy Rock which until 1914 was named Redwine. [10]

In 1982 a Petroglyph site was discovered beside Spy Rock Road which provided the first evidence of complex rock art boulders in the western United States. [11] [12]

The Spy Rock Road album by The Lookouts was named after the road by Larry Livermore who lived in Spy Rock in the 1980s. [2]

Spy Rock features prominently in the 2021 Hulu docuseries Sasquatch.

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Sasquatch is an American true crime documentary television series that premiered on Hulu on April 20, 2021, with a South by Southwest pre-release screen on March 16, 2021. The show begins with investigative journalist David Holthouse's recalling a story he heard in 1993 on a cannabis farm in Mendocino County, part of the Emerald Triangle in Northern California. Holthouse heard someone say that Bigfoot has killed three people on a nearby cannabis farm. Throughout the show Holthouse talks with marijuana growers and law enforcement in Mendocino County, who tell him about possible connections to the Hells Angels biker gang and Spy Rock Road, a lawless marijuana growing area of Mendocino County near Laytonville. These interviews reveal the larger problem of missing persons in the Emerald Triangle.

The Great Redwood Trail is a proposed multi-use rail-to-trail project connecting San Francisco and Humboldt bays in Northern California. Most of the trail will be built on the rail bed of the defunct Northwestern Pacific Railroad along the Eel River Canyon by the Great Redwood Trail Agency. The southern portion will be built by Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) along their commuter rail line. The trail route is within 5 counties, 14 cities and the ancestral territory of many tribes. Some portions have already constructed by local jurisdictions with more being developed in cooperation with local governments.

References

  1. 1 2 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Spyrock, California
  2. 1 2 3 Larry Livermore (June 4, 2013). Spy Rock Memories. ISBN   9780989196307.
  3. DeLorme California Atlas & Gazetteer (2008) Yarmouth, Maine p.47 ISBN   0-89933-383-4
  4. "Spyrock Reserve » The Wildlands Conservancy". The Wildlands Conservancy. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  5. "Let's Get Antiquated". The Press Democrat. September 19, 1971. p. 55. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  6. "Spy Rock", Santa Ana Register, p. 6, August 29, 1976, Leisure supplement, retrieved April 22, 2021
  7. Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 149. ISBN   1-884995-14-4.
  8. "Spy Rock Elementary - School Directory Details (CA Dept of Education)". www.cde.ca.gov. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  9. "Spyrock School District". Ukiah Dispatch Democrat. April 13, 1900. p. 5. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  10. "Redwine to be Renamed Spy Rock". Ukiah Daily Journal. August 21, 1914. p. 7. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  11. Mark Gary; Dan Foster (1990), "Mendocino County and Rock Art Conservation" (PDF), Society for California Archaeology Newsletter, Society for California Archaeology, vol. 24, no. 3
  12. Dainel G. Foster, "A Note on CA-MEN-1912 The Spyrock Road Site, Mendocino County, Califormia.pdf", San Diego Museum of Man Rock Art Papers, San Diego Museum: 51–56