WILLITS, CA., 9/18/26 — There’s no good road to Crowley. It’s a clearing in the woods west of Willits, at the summit of the Skunk Train’s line, and until Sept. 27, there’s a circus tent on it.
The tent came in by rail. So did the performers and everything else Flynn Creek Circus needs to put on a two-hour show, said Kimberly Preciado, public relations manager for Mendocino Railway. The audience arrives the same way, on 21 departures out of the Willits depot this month.
On Wednesday evening, the 5:30 p.m. train had a new car on it. The Noyo is the Skunk’s second Presidential Class car, a cocktail lounge on wheels with room for about 22 people, all of them 21 or older. It began life as a U.S. Army car. The railroad’s own crews rebuilt it inside the roundhouse in Fort Bragg, then moved it to Willits by highway in August, because the line between the two towns has been cut at Tunnel No. 1 since a collapse in 2015.
We rode as guests, as part of a press preview that Mendocino Railway, which operates the Skunk Train, held that evening.
The railroad’s other premium car, the Redwood, works out of Fort Bragg and is done up in the style of the 1920s. The Noyo is mid-century, 1945 to 1955 or so, and the railroad’s fact sheet names the industrial designers Otto Kuhler and Henry Dreyfuss as the inspiration. Inside, the rows of seats are gone. There are tan leather armchairs and mustard velvet sofas around small round tables, green walls, globe sconces over the windows and a patterned blue carpet. The light bites were a plate of salami, cheese, cornichons, figs, dried apricots and grapes on a napkin printed with the car’s name.
In an interview at the Willits depot, Robert Jason Pinoli, president and CEO of Mendocino Railway, said, “Most of the passenger cars that are associated with this railroad were built in the late 19-teens or the early 1920s. Because the lines are so clean and simplicity was really ever-present, conveying that on board made it tricky,” he said.
The gentle climb to Crowley takes about 45 minutes. The car rides comfortably, through Willits and into the redwoods.
The tent is at the top, a red-and-white striped big top staked out in a dirt clearing with tall evergreens on every side, string lights overhead and a cluster of red lawn chairs off to one side. The train stops no more than 100 feet from the circus tent, in an open meadow.
The circus is homegrown
Flynn Creek is a Mendocino County outfit, started in Comptche in 2002 and run by Blaze Birge and her husband, David Jones. It tours California, Oregon and Washington from June to January under its own tent. It bills itself as all human skill and spectacle. There are no animals in the ring, and at Crowley not much machinery either. The show runs mostly on muscle.
This year’s show is “The Cricket & the Wren,” a fairy tale about a merchant’s daughter who sets out to break the spell on the Frog Prince. The company’s cast list includes an aerialist who spent the pandemic building an act on the multicorde, a bundle of hanging ropes she calls the death spaghetti; Katie Russo, who came to the Chinese pole by way of drum corps and a trombone; and Franklin Mendoza, a Venezuelan-born comedian who hangs by his hair.
The company also carries apprentices. One of them, Bodhi Devries, was at Crowley on Wednesday. He is 17, a rope aerialist and self-taught juggler from Comptche, and his bio says he grew up on the road the circus is named for.
Pinoli’s plans for Willits go past cocktails. The railroad is “doubling down” on the town, he said, on the passenger side and on freight. He has thoughts of expanding operations to north-south tracks in the Ukiah valley. Asked what his trains would be hauling in five years, he listed three things.
“I think that you will see aggregate. I think you will see lumber, both raw and finished,” he said. “I think that there’s the potential to bring propane into Mendocino County.”
A natural gas pipeline serves the inland county only as far north as Willits, he said, and everywhere else runs on propane that arrives by truck. He said one rail car would equal four or five semi-trucks.
A seat on the Noyo on an ordinary departure is $203.50 and includes two cocktails, light bites and a souvenir glass. During the circus run, the car is the top ticket, the Ringmaster VIP Table, at $322 with a table nearest the ring. Reserved seating with a picnic meal is $216, and general admission with the train ride is $136.50. Residents of Mendocino, Lake and Humboldt counties get a discount on every show but Saturdays.
Trains leave the depot at 299 E. Commercial St. at 12:30 p.m. or 5:30 p.m., depending on the day, and the railroad asks riders to arrive half an hour early. No dogs. Tickets are at skunktrain.com.
After the last show on Sept. 27, the tent goes back down the hill the way it came up. Flynn Creek opens in Corvallis, Oregon, on Oct. 1.