Big changes possible for both bridges, Albion Headlands, Albion Flats, long-closed Kerry Jane Market, a public trail to the north, and Kristoffersen Ranch

What if activists tried to save the Albion headlands from development and instead made it more difficult to be saved?

That might be happening, but it’s a question a reporter can’t really ask, much less demand answers for.

Everything in Albion will be changing more radically over the next few years than has happened since the massive Albion lumber mill closed. There are only tiny remnants left of the lumber operation that once filled the Albion flats with structures that dwarf everything in Albion now.

Here is what is happening now:

• The 84-acre Albion Headlands is for sale and the land trust wants it, but getting an appraisal that can allow them to make a straight-up purchase remains the obstacle. The property is advertised as having a dozen buildable parcels. If the land is truly a candidate for development, that would enable a higher appraisal. But if it’s purely scenic, it’s harder to justify the $7 million asking price. I have seen challenges to whether land can truly be developed backfire. Nobody doubts that somebody will pay that for this land, which would be nothing short of a king’s kingdom for some billionaire or even multimillionaire. But acquiring land for preservation requires using appraisals that are by nature designed to be blind to unique. Everyone thinks their land is unique. Problem here- this truly is. I put an address into the story below. of how you can contribute to the Land Trust. I recommend this over digging deeper or demanding the highway sign be changed!

• Tucked into the middle of the Albion Headlands is the old Fireside Market, later the Kerry Jane Market, closed for decades, and a neighboring gas station. This reporter has learned that the market property has recently had an accepted offer on it with the buyer (if escrow completes) planning to renovate the old store and reopen it. Mendocinocoast.news tried to reach out to the buyer, but he did not respond.  Fireside Market’s owner was infamously a hippie  hater when the long haired back to the landers began making Albion a mecca in the 1960s.  The next owner, Lee, welcomed the new settlers. He sold the market to  Mansor and Majid Shokohi in 1977, who named it the Village Trading Post. This family continues to own the property.

• The Mendocino Land Trust has a public access trail in the works on the north side of the now publicly inaccessible Albion headlands, near the Albion River Inn. More on this In a future story but imagine being able to walk out and look back at the bridge and the fabulous headlands. If this trail was open now, I’m sure some rich somebody would step up to buy it and save it. Its the biggest thing on the Coast, but hard to see at the same time.

• Caltrans is moving forward with plans to replace the Albion River Bridge and then the Salmon Creek Bridge without providing any increase in public access or any sidewalks beyond the bridges themselves. Community opposition remains strong, but more people now support a new Albion River Bridge than when I first wrote a story for the Fort Bragg Advocate News in 2006 about Caltrans’s plans to report. That has come out not only in public meetings, but in direct contacts and social media contacts with me.. Not many are from Albion. Some were swayed by photos of wood decay in one area that Caltrans showed last year, whether or not poor maintenance is to blame. 

• The owners of the Albion flats, the campground under the Albion River Bridge, have stopped blocking free public access to Albion Beach, I have learned. I am going to go talk to them and write a separate story about this as I need to verify from them that all charging has ended. I am told there is a one-hour limit on parking no. . When this reporter went to the flats to try to walk out and take photos of the Albion River Bridge twice in  2024, I was asked to pay a parking fee and an entrance fee. I did not and I complained to the California Coastal Commission. When my public access was blocked,   I proposed a story last year for the news outlet, for which  I was writing about the bridge. I wanted to start a fight over public access in 2024 but they refused me. . They did not want a story that advocated for public access. I was told this was activism. Journalists always advocate for public records and public access in my somewhat antiquated view of the profession. I believe in public access and community resilience as much as I believe in fair, ethical, journalism.

• Further south, the Mendocino Land Trust is one of the players seeking to purchase the old Kris Kristofferson ranch. The songwriting great and prominent actor put it up for sale not long before he died in September 2024 at 88.  This property is in Elk. It is 557 acres, wow!  Its on the east side of the highway, literally a Willie Mays throw from centerfield to the water, and rolls up into the hills. 

I am also investigating whether the fences blocking access to  Big Salmon Creek Beach located under the Salmon Creek bridge just south of Albion. Can the property owners continue to block a beach by permanently locking a gate that was once left open, I have been told by reliable sources?. I have reports from Norbert Dall that the beach was once open to walkers and riders and now from two more reliable people.  And I’m also asking why Caltrans is seeking no public access improvements at all when the California Coastal Commission (which shocked Caltrans by turning down its completed plans for the 10 Mile Bridge BECAUSE they failed to consider public access) demands public access and environmental improvements for disruptions like a new bridge?

More on the Albion Headlands

The biggest issue right now is saving the headlands, something Albion residents have done back to the 1970s, when the motel plan was stopped. So were multiple efforts to divide up the property for development. MLT has made an initial offer on the property and will be completing a more comprehensive offer including earnest money (approx. $200k) and a plan for obtaining long-term funding for the fair-market balance.

In the meanwhile Rixanne Wehren reports a new group of Albion residents (Save the Albion Headlands – STAH) is sponsoring the effort by raising “seed money” supporting MLT research and outreach to the seller and to funding organizations. “We have already contributed over $500, but much more is needed. So we are reaching out to the 60+ people who attended the meeting, as well as over 300 Albion supporters.”

If you can contribute $$ please send a check to the address below, but made out to Mendocino Land Trust, noting Albion Headlands in the memo. This helps us keep track of donations and send thank you notes. Tell all your friends, too! Alternatively, you could send a check directly to Mendocino Land Trust , PO Box 2058, Fort Bragg CA 95437.

In this case, I think the public. should should the public give full support for intricate real estate deals that will be done out of the public eyeand not press too hard on whether the parcels are developable? I think so. But we always need to look below the surface.

When I was a young reporter, I spent years investigating land trades in Yuba-Sutter-Colusa-Butte and Glenn counties. I stepped through the floor of reality that reporters are never supposed to look under and found a cabal of good old boys, let’s say, who had reshaped the entire area and made millions collaborating with the Trust for Public Lands and Nature Conservancy to direct government and other funds into duck clubs, wetlands and rice farms. When I started looking I soon had an incredible range of people join me, Realtors, police officers, game wardens and county supervisors concerned about the loss of tax base from government money going to “save” land that could not possibly be developed. They did this by threatening development. Most of them were bankers and developers. All on both sides were Republicans, so this was not national political.

I had never understood what the Nature Conservancy was for. They explained to me their purpose was to buy land government could NOT. Because of not just the restrictions imposed by appraised values, but by budgeting and lack of vision.

Although the Sierra Club was not one of these land trusts exactly, a famous story about how Sierra Club founder John Muir wined and dined John D. Rockefeller and thrilled him by introducing him to great people and great places with the robber baron industrialist was in California on vacation. He accompanied him on a bus trip with other tourists to Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Mendocino county had pretty much logged off all its old growth redwoods. In Humboldt County, Muir told Rockefeller to have one last look at the greatest old growth redwood forest left, as it was going to be purchased by an aggressive logging company and logged off. In one version, Rockefeller said, “No it’s not. How much is the forest? In any case he bought it and the 10,000 acre Rockefeller Forest remains today the largest remaining contiguous old-growth coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest in the world.

The Land Trusts I wrote about made these kind of deals. Sometimes they traded one piece of land donated to them to another, supposedly more environmentally consequential pieces of land. Sometimes the future, the planet and the public benefited. Somtimes all of those lost and the developer got richer and the land trust organization too. They all told me their sole purpose was to facilitate land going to the government. They said on the record they used methods the moribund government could not use The government was always described as being too slow to save the lands. You needed, a Rockefeller, Muir and then a land trust.

But at the Navarro Grange public meeting on June 9th, I was told by the Mendocino Land Trust that there is no way they can do anything but pay the full appraised value. I argued this point briefly (and incorrectly). What I was remembering was incredible wheeling and dealing that featured multi-state and once, multi-national swaps. It involved appraiser shopping and manipulating prices by insiders buying and selling land in a certain area. Then using their sales to each other as comparables, then selling to the government for jacked-up prices. In most places, there was none of this but the  Nature Conservancy would buy land and hold it till the value went up. That way an owner itching to sell could do so and not have the land developed. I also documented how much land donated to the big national land trusts ended up being traded away, and land purchased instead that was never actually threatened with development. At times, I showed it was from insiders.) But as I was about to argue in public, I remembered other cases I remembered two things. 1. This land is by any standard worth any means to get. 2. I covered cases in the past where people against public lands (in some of those cases understandably so) stopped purchases by filing lawsuits and giving public input that showed the land could not really be. developed although the books said so?

No doubt, the Mendocino Land Trust is a much more honest broker, which is just about to reach 50,000 acres saved in 50 years. They have never wheeled and dealt on a scale like I was used to. But maybe this was still a time not to dig too deep when absolutely nobody wants to screw up in any deal that could be done, not the property owner, not the environmentalists and certainly not the public who would get access to the tallest ocean bluff between Navarro Ridge and Blues Beach…  The Nature Conservancy probably had 50,000 acres in their pocket to trade or save on a given day, at least back in the 1990s.  Far larger savings involving the Conservation Fund have gone on in Mendocino County.  Conrad Kramer, CEO of the Mendocino Land Trust, told me after the meeting that the Nature Conservancy does not deal in Mendocino County. I was amazed. I know these big nature trusts sometimes actually compete but usually have territories and donors and don’t tread on each other. The Trust for Public Lands has worked here and been involved with efforts to purchase this property in the past.

I almost pressed my questions at the meeting, but literally bit my tongue.  If they were trying to come up with better appraisals and make some trade, they couldn’t say, nor could anybody in the transaction. The question I asked and found worth asking in the past was, is the public and environmental interest being served or is this a win-win for insiders and a lose-kind-of win for the public and environment? Surprisingly, I found it was often a lose-lose-lose when these deals went on behind closed doors. But overall, much land got saved that would not have been. 

And more money was paid for the wrong land in many cases.

Trust but verify. Journalists need to be watching or big business will screw up the world, sometimes collaborating with government insiders. That’s not the issue here. There is no other side of the story. All of us want this land saved if possible, so time to move on.

The Albion headlands were slated for development as a hotel in the 1970s but that was defeated by activists. (See clipping and yes, this is the same land, thanks for all the help). It was then approved for purchase by the state twice, once vetoed by Republican California Gov. George Deukmejian and another time, other parcels were preserved but not this truly pristine treasure  State Sen. Wes Chesbro worked hard to make this happen, but it did not.  I’m still baffled by why all these efforts failed. Was it the owner, the state or something else?  Why was the land never developed nor a house put up there? (I have searched  everywhere and found no record) I found a clipping from the early 1940s where someone’s car partly fell through the old Albion River wooden bridge and the property to the west of the bridge was called the Smith Ranch!  Not the same Smiths who now own it. I had wondered if they were coming back to old family property at some point, but I found nothing that would indicate that, just a coincidence based on a common name.

This story isn’t just about the Albion headlands. But the superb meeting that Tom Wodetzki organized about the headlands gives a lot of great info.  

Check out Jim Heid’s recording by clicking here

While the sprawling Albion lumber mill is long gone, the tiny parcels that are attached to the property are a remnant of that era. They were created in 1908, supposedly to allow lumber workers to live there.

Albion has always been the weirdest and coolest place to be on the Coast from its days as a Mexican land grant to the eclectic Finnish loggers who built all those homes pointed in all different directions on unusually shaped parcels to the Hippie communes, to the heyday of pot to now and a future bound to be wildly different no matter which way it goes.

One of the weirdest parts of the story is all the times somebody tried to sell the property and it flopped. There were the hotel  people back in the 70s, the multiple attempts and promises to buy by the state, the Trust for Public Lands.  The goofiest one of all was that the land was apparently for sale without any visible sign back in 2018. Nobody at the meeting knew this, nor did the guy I know who bought other land and could have bought that if he had known it was for sale. Could a real estate agent be that bad? Or did they want to sell it and not attract the community interest?

A scenario one person suggested. A plan to bring back the market and even the auto garage, with worker housing along the road and the rest preserved or at least a big part of the western half of it and public access for sure.  Another- Caltrans could help buy the land as part of replacing the bridge, suggested by someone who intends to do everything he can to stop the bridge from being replaced.  The main reason the bridge won’t be replaced is not the critics but Caltrans being blown away once again by budget cycles and priorities.  Time and time again since my first article in 2006, they have come, expressed extreme urgency for replacing both bridges, and then departed. 

I do see urgency to either replace these bridges or begin massive upgrades. No more dithering around. Get ‘er done one way or another.

The idea I’ve put forward in my public comment is only for if  they replace the bridge or bridges:

•Provide full public access to the beaches under Salmon Creek and Albion River Bridges

• Build Sidewalks from the north side of Salmon Creek down to at least Albion River Inn (SCP). This can only be done when they straighten the road out as planned. But doing so will make walking and biking threatened by even faster-moving traffic on a straight road.

• Repurpose the wooden Albion Bridge into a low walkway  bridge that allows foot traffic to  cross the river. Commission art for the rest of the structure.

•  Promise to provide worker housing and provide a substantial portion of worker housing locally. Train people to do these jobs. Two bridges are going to take a decade and go way over budget, it’s just a reality. Have local workers.

•Provide live bridge models, not mostly empty webpags at least for Albion. The bridge defines the town. The two of them can’t be freeway overpasses from LA.  And offer actual options. The non-options in the plan were a bit insulting.

And answer some questions

•How much money does Caltrans have for bridge replacement on Highway 1 in its current budget cycle?  Can Caltrans provide a list of bridges identified as needing to be replaced on Highway 1 from Mexico to Oregon?  This would give the community and the media a perspective.

Is there a time limit on the funding for replacing the bridge? If so, please detail.

This will be thrilling and difficult next few years. Let’s all practice respect and work for a consensus, then move forward with that!  What Albion and all of us on the Coast do now will determine everything about how this community will look for the next century.