169 - Mendocino
For thousands of years, a Pomo Indian settlement was established on the north bank of the Big River near the present site of the town of Mendocino in northern California. In 1850, a two-masted clipper ship called the Frolic, carrying a valuable cargo of Chinese merchandise to San Francisco, ran aground and was wrecked on a rocky beach just north of where Mendocino would be built. When the news reached San Francisco, a group of men traveled north to the site. They found nothing and assumed the Pomo tribe found it first. (they did) But they returned to San Francisco with good news - the much more valuable discovery of countless forests of giant redwood trees. This was the beginning of California’s lumber industry in 1851. The first lumber mill was built out on the western tip of the Mendocino headlands in 1852 and produced the lumber to build the town of Mendocino. An unlimited source of redwood lumber and the wealth supplied by lucky gold miners fed the rapid growth of the city of San Francisco.