Ancient Redwoods, Empty Beaches, and Foraged Fine Dining on California’s Northern Coast
by Marisa Meltzer • photos by Jake Michaels
published in the Condé Naste Traveler on April 12, 2021
“There's a history of booms and busts here," said Otis Brown, the resident storyteller at the Inn at Newport Ranch. “Fish, lumber, cannabis—and we'll see about ecotourism.” He was shouting bits of local lore as he navigated a Kawasaki UTV around the inn's 2,000 acres of private trails, passing stumps of redwood trees that were cut down 150 years ago, many with their inner layers eaten out by enterprising black bears. We whizzed by the house of the hotel's closest neighbor, who Otis said was John Gray, author of the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus self-help books.
In the mid-19th century, Newport, just outside present-day Fort Bragg, was a tiny logging community. When the loggers left town after a few decades, dairy and fruit farmers took over. Once the farmers cleared out too, about a century ago, the area became a haven for a certain kind of dissident thinker drawn to its remoteness. In 1941, a group of these new residents, scattered across several counties in northernmost California and southern Oregon, launched a failed bid to create a new state called Jefferson. That secessionist energy has remained at a low simmer ever since, drawing utopianists, pot growers, and other practitioners of alternative lifestyles. Every few decades—most recently around the time of the 2016 election—it rises to a gentle boil.
We eased our way toward the Pacific via the Anderson Valley, about two and a half hours north of San Francisco, along a winding 35-mile stretch of Highway 128. The isolationist element is alive and well in the local newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which has revolving mottoes: “America's Last Newspaper” and “Fanning the Flames of Discontent.” But now the valley is home to an up-and-coming wine scene. It feels like Napa must have in the 1970s, or Sonoma in the 1990s: funky, unpolished, mom-and-pop. “Tasting rooms have doubled in the last 12 years,” said Paula Viehmann after bringing us a flight of pinot noirs to sip at Goldeneye, a winery and tasting room in the tiny town of Philo.
We only had to go next door to spend the night. Jim Roberts and Brian Adkinson, owners of The Madrones, have built a kind of Mediterranean-inspired compound with guest rooms (mine was their former living room); four tasting rooms; and a restaurant whose chefs, Alexa Newman and Rodney Workman, are Chez Panisse alumni. The Bohemian Chemist, the on-site spa and cannabis apothecary, is unlike other dispensaries that I've visited, which usually look like old-school head shops or Apple stores. The owners purchased the fittings from an Art Deco pharmacy in Hungary. I bought a THC bath bomb that was so effective at chilling me out that I spent five minutes after my soak looking for my glasses until I realized they were still on my face.
