Mendocino County Mendocino County Travel Guide: Best Hotels, Restaurants & Experiences

Mendocino County stretches along 130 miles of dramatic Pacific coastline north of San Francisco, where sea stacks rise from the surf and redwood forests climb steep coastal bluffs. The village of Mendocino itself, perched on a headland above the ocean, retains its nineteenth-century New England character — white clapboard buildings, water towers, and picket fences that made it a convincing stand-in for Maine in countless films. Inland, Anderson Valley's fog-cooled vineyards produce exceptional Pinot Noir and Gewürztraminer, while the town of Boonville maintains its own folk language, Boontling, invented by locals in the 1880s.

Accommodation here tends toward the intimate. Victorian mansions converted to inns line the bluffs of Mendocino village; working ranches in the Anderson Valley offer rooms among the vines. Fort Bragg, the larger working town to the north, anchors the Skunk Train heritage railway and the Noyo Harbor fishing fleet. The dining scene draws from immediate surroundings — Dungeness crab from local waters, lamb from inland ranches, produce from organic farms that have operated here since the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s.