2. Location, History and Economy

Fort Bragg is in Mendocino County on northern California’s Pacific Coast, 172 miles to the north of San Francisco. The community is bordered on the north by Pudding Creek, which flows into the Pacific Ocean through a narrow inlet, and on the south by the Noyo river which terminates in the Pacific at Noyo Harbor. Fort Bragg encompasses 2.73 square miles of land.

Fort Bragg occupies the ancestral homelands of the Pomo people. Pomo refers to 72 independent tribes that shared linguistic lineage. Today, there are seven diverse Pomo language dialects. Pomo Indians are famous for their baskets, which were used for hunting and food storage and preparation. Pomo groups living along the Mendocino coast relied heavily on salmon, shellfish, and sea mammals (Source). The Pomo population is estimated to have been 20,000 at the time of European contact, however many lives were soon lost to disease and conflicts with colonizers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established a system of reservations and settlements called “rancherias” across the state. The Mendocino Indian Reservation was established in 1856 on 25,000 acres between the Ten Mile and Noyo rivers. Sherwood Valley Rancheria, established under Secretarial Order in 1909, is the successor in interest to ownership of the Mendocino Indian Reservation. Today descendants of the Pomo from Mendocino make up the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, a Federally recognized tribe.

Fort Bragg was founded in 1857 as a military outpost on the Mendocino Indian Reservation (Source). The fort was named after Captain Braxton Bragg, a Mexican War veteran and friend of the Fort’s founder. Colonization and the violence of forced relocation quickly decimated the local Pomo population, and the reservation and military outpost was abandoned in 1867. The land was sold for settlement. Soon Fort Bragg became one of the most important timber towns in the region, due to its proximity to the Noyo River (Source). Around the time that a fort was established, the first sawmill on the West Coast was built on the Noyo River (Source).

In 1885, the Union Lumber Company built a larger sawmill operation and the Fort Bragg Railroad was created to move logs from the surrounding forest to the mills in town. With the timber industry starting to boom, Fort Bragg was incorporated in 1889 (Source). Timber remained an important industry in Fort Bragg until 2002, when the city’s largest mill, owned by Georgia-Pacific Corporation, closed resulting in the loss of several hundred jobs. Smaller mills in the area soon followed suit. In 2003, the last sawmill in Fort Bragg, Mendocino Forest Products, closed after more than 50 years of operation (Source).

Fishing has played an important part in Fort Bragg’s economy and community identity. The first commercial fishery in Fort Bragg was recorded in 1898. As boats became motorized, trollers were able to vastly increase their harvests and salmon canneries opened along the Noyo River in the 1920s. By the 1970s and 80s, managers questioned the sustainability of salmon stocks, especially with compounded pressures from fishing, drought, and river diversions. Soon management measures began restricting non-tribal salmon fishing, impacting the commercial and recreational sectors and the local economy. Despite these restrictions, many fishers stayed in the salmon fishery traveling as far as Oregon and San Francisco to fish. In the 1930s, a groundfish fishery was established in the harbor with species such as rockfish, lingcod and halibut, and has been maintained as one of the port’s primary fisheries. However, between restrictions in the salmon fishery, and later the groundfish fishery, fishing activity in the port overall has declined since the late 1980s (Source). The community was particularly hard hit by the collapse of the groundfish stocks in the late 90s and the Federal vessel buyback in 2003 which removed more than half of the port’s bottom trawl fleet (Source: Personal interview, harbormaster).

In 1972, the northern California red sea urchin fishery opened, primarily on the Mendocino coast near Fort Bragg. The northern fishery expanded in 1985 in what has been termed a “gold rush” as landings decreased in the south and exchange rates made the foreign export industry profitable. A sea urchin processor opened in Fort Bragg that same year. Statewide, landings peaked in 1988, however, they have since declined as a result of overexploitation and El Niño events which impacted the fishery as well as the collapse of the Japanese market which shifted the fishery to primarily domestic buyers (Source). More recently the red sea urchin population has struggled from the competition with purple sea urchins, leading to a Federal fishery disaster declaration for both the 2016 and 2017 seasons (Source).