Noyo Harbor Festival draws big crowd to new space
MENDOCINO CO., 9/25/24 — “Best kept secret in Fort Bragg” might be great advertising for some things but not usually for a public event. During its inaugural 2023 run, the Noyo Harbor Festival had virtually no pre-publicity. The slow start was meant to give festival planners time to work out the kinks. But it didn’t stop the festival from being packed both years, wherein lies the problem.
While North Noyo Harbor competes with Glass Beach, the Skunk Train and MacKerricher State Park as Fort Bragg’s primary tourist attractions, the harbor is very narrow. Walking down North Harbor Drive from State Route 1 would be a death-defying downhill if anybody were to try. Once you reach the harbor itself, the road is narrow, there are no sidewalks and parking is limited. Drivers and pedestrians compete for space along the narrow roadway. The 2023 event was packed and popular and created a traffic jam. So, in 2024, the event was held almost entirely in the large parking lot of the long-closed Captain Flint’s eatery.
This allowed people to walk down a steep and modestly maintained gravel pathway in the shadow of the Noyo River Bridge. The central location is only a short walk from the trail outlet. But people still had to walk on North Harbor Drive to get there.
In more than a dozen chats with people who attended, they agreed on one thing — the festival was fun, and they had a great time. But apart from that, opinions varied.
“Craft vendors, food trucks, beverage vendors, live music, urchin tasting, etc. were concentrated in one parking lot as opposed to alongside Harbor Drive, which was convenient,” said festival attendee Julie Parker. “However, this resulted in very little foot traffic to the Noyo Center for Marine Science Field Station [where there were presentations]. There was hardly anyone there compared to last year.” The Coast Guard Lifeboat also saw few visitors given that the lifeboat was docked behind the field station where no one could see it unless one was visiting the field station.
Those who love music liked the new setup as the dancing and tunes benefited from the bigger crowds at the parking lot. Others missed the scenery provided by last year’s all-harbor eclectic scene visible from Harbor Drive, which includes ancient rusting cannery equipment, antique vehicles, dangerously dilapidated turn-of-the-century structures, fish markets, deep sea fishing party boats and a distillery. But this year the weather was atypical for Fort Bragg: clear blue skies and 71 degrees during the festival.
No activities took place in the South Harbor. The South Harbor is accessed off State Route 20, while the North Harbor is reached heading down past the north end of the Noyo River Bridge. Originally, the two harbors were connected by a low bridge. But when the first high bridge was built above the harbor, the low bridge was demolished, leaving two separate areas, each called Noyo Harbor.
Harbormaster Anna Neumann, whose office is in the South Harbor, said the festival is held entirely in the North Harbor to give a boost to the retail businesses there. The South Harbor is home to the fishing fleet, the Coast Guard Station, private fishing boats and industrial facilities such as Caito Fisheries processing plant and Thanksgiving Coffee’s factory, none set up for shoppers or partiers.
Neumann explained that the event is meant to support the Noyo Harbor District, “but we don’t yet have a direct project that the money goes to. Honestly, last year we didn’t make all that much money. This year we made much more. The goal of the event is to celebrate the harbor, and we wanted to host an event that was affordable for locals. We are thinking about another event in South Harbor that is targeted more for the fishing fleet, but just brainstorming that at the moment.”
North Noyo Harbor has been entangled in political controversy for decades, as it sits in an unincorporated area but benefits from Fort Bragg city services. The idea of Fort Bragg annexing the area was debated by the candidates for city council at a forum last week, along with putting a second entrance to the cramped harbor that would access the west side of State Route 1. That road already exists but travels through not just city and county territory but also tribal property, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredge spoils site and a hotel. Neumann said the Harbor District, City of Fort Bragg and its Blue Economy program, Councilmember Marcia Rafanan, the West Business Development Center, and Noyo Center sponsored the festival.
“I would love to see the event continue and hopefully start to incorporate more local seafood,” Neumann said. “We have many great fishermen here who make some great dishes. Local boats feeding local folks.”
Everyone was enjoying the perfect weather, and not just people. In the river below the bridge, seals basked, played and showed off. A common loon laid on its back, wings outstretched, splashing water on itself while the humans sampled uni, beer, locally made candy and textiles.
In the 20th century, nobody would have tried a post-Labor Day festival in Fort Bragg. But tourism has changed. Local hotels and campgrounds, which once made as little as 20 percent of their revenue from October to April, now have as much as doubled that amount.
With an early morning rescue by California State Parks Monday morning at Lake Cleone amidst a still crowded MacKerricher Park, it was clear that the tourist season doesn’t end after Labor Day on the Mendocino Coast.
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