The Mendocino Headlands stretch along the south side of Mendocino’s Main Street and the western border of town. For over a century, over 20 buildings and a lumberyard took up much of the space along Main Street, west of the Ford House. The last of these buildings were demolished by 1960.
Auggie Heeser owned much of the empty land west of town. In the late 1950s, Heeser donated some land to the State Fish and Wildlife Department under the condition it remain an open space. Heeser’s cousin, Al Nichols, sold the remaining land to the Parks Department in the 1970s.
The land south of Main Street was owned by the Union Lumber Company, which was bought by the Boise Cascade Company in 1968. The acquisition included over 70 acres of undeveloped land along the headland and Big River. The company produced forest products and developed land, including building company housing on similar property elsewhere.
Locals feared commercial development on the land, and the preservationist mindset was just beginning to percolate through the town. Emmy Lou Packard initiated a “citizens campaign” to preserve the headlands and halt potential development.
Packard was an internationally known artist, studying under Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as a child.
Emmy began a letter-writing campaign. In the words of Mildred Benioff, who worked with Packard and chaired the Headlands Park Committee, Packard “Knew everybody. She knew who to write. She spread the word.”
In a letter dated December 24, 1968, C. Malcom Watkins from the Smithsonian Institute replied to Packard’s plan with “an emphatic ‘Amen,’” and argued, “I do not think it is an overstatement that it appears just as important for California to have Mendocino preserved and guarded … as it was for Virginia to have Williamsburg.”
The headlands issue was brought before California State Park Director William Mott, who enthusiastically supported the preservation of the headlands and Mendocino as a whole. Mott asserted that preserving the headlands would do little good if the town became an eyesore.
The Headlands Park Committee worked to create the Historic Preservation District Ordinance, which the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors accepted in 1973. Simultaneously, negotiations continued with Boise Cascade, concluding in a land swap. In exchange for the headlands, Boise Cascade received timberland located inland. In 1974, the headlands combined with the land west of town to become the Mendocino Headlands State Park, surrounding Mendocino with beautiful, open space.
To hear more about the headlands, visit the Kelley House Museum YouTube channel to watch Mildred Benioff speak about “Saving the Headlands” during a 2007 event at the Kelley House.
Averee McNear is the curator at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, Calif.