[UPDATE 9:54 p.m.] Law Enforcement in the Sprowel Creek Area
An anonymous reader messaged me this morning that there was a “Fish and Wildlife convoy up Sproul Creek Road…with a chipper.” Attempts to reach that person failed. But as of five p.m. I was contacted by two others with credible evidence that the Mendocino Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement is raiding somewhere in northern Mendocino which is accessible by Sprowel Creek Road.
We’re crowdsourcing this. Does anyone have any more information?
UPDATE 9:54 p.m.: KMUD News tells us that the Mendocino Sheriff’s Office was on the Nielson Ranch.
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Two dfg vehicles were headed north on 101 around 5pm past miranda. Must be the some of the convoy on the way back home.
I’m hearing that the raided folks had been removing truckloads days previous to the raid..
Great job helping criminals Kym.
Sigh…This was posted after 5:30–even you must see that there was no way in hell that this warned anyone.
But now I’m about to post about law enforcement staging at the bottom of Salmon Creek this morning. Now you can legitimately worry that of the hundreds of growers up there, the targeted grower is reading my site and has the wherewithal to do something in the next 30 minutes before law enforcement can get to him/her
Keep up the good work Kym. You are just carrying the torch for the old school KMUD listeners. Remember Estelle and her reporting?
“CLMP report at 11 and 3 or as needed”
Sure do remember.
Old Estelle really fooled me.
Kinda sad really.
No worries Kym, anyone who lives around where ever they stage has already heard they were around…working man probably doesn’t even live around here, or he would know that…..
Pretty lame accusing you. The growers seem to have a 24 hour lookout posted at the 101 salmon creek exit. They hardly need you to warn them.
I love it. That made me LOL.
Love your site!
Pardon us while we remove hundreds or a thousand or more pounds of plant material in fifteen minutes.
if they are FNG’s ….they deserve it
If you don’t like her news, then go somewhere else. The Internet is a big place. Thanks Kim!
How the hell does one get to Mendocino through Sprowel Creek? I guess with a pair of bolt cutters and a shotgun, there’d be a lot of pissed-off property owners.
Yes, you would have to go through private property, which is probably where the law was going. So that works out.
It’s easy. Just drive down the end of the road, go through ranch until you hit Mikes property. He’s right on the border on Mondocino and is known to spread RAT POISON all up and down the mountain. The guy is a thief, wildlife killer and total scum bag. Glad he got busted last year. Hope they got him again this year!
I’ve always preferred “Sprowel,” as it is spelled in the headline, but I think the family for whom it was named was “Sproul,” as it’s spelled in the body. Sometimes you see “Sprowl,” too.
Alright then einstein!
Mike sold some of his land after last year’s raid and the guys that bought it were hella busy hauling in materials like it’s going out of style,…all that hard work,….
I don’t know about you, but I scrolled along that map following the road, and, man, the road naming way out there gets all out of whack. It’s not accurate. That’s Google for you, sending huge rigs into tiny spots (like out by Zenia/Kettenpom, or wherever we keep hearing about it), making it look like these tiny roads actually go someplace.
And long before Google, people would show up out there with a map in hand, looking confused, and ask, “Where is the ocean?” And their maps would show a road, Sprowel, connecting way out there with dead roads and going all the way past the Moody ghost town and out to Bear Harbor and Shelter Cove. Completely impassible to all but hoof and foot (or intrepid motorcyclist. With shovel and saw.)
Yep. Same google that sends big rigs over 36 to get stuck between Dinsmore & Bridgeville
Mapping is funny. So you’d think Cal-Fire would have some good ones? No, they were using the same sources that show the road on my property as going through and over the gap and then all the way into Leggett. And that explains why they drove a bulldozer through an old landslide and plum into the creek before they stopped and tried another strategy. I’m not blaming Cal-Fire and I sure wish I’d been there to help them not do that. The road has actually been dead-ended at my place since the early 60’s, pieces can be found here and there but that section past the gap into Leggett is WAY blown out and into the creek bed for a long time. But just look at Google and there it is! Along with a dozen more from the 50’s heyday that ended up on topo maps… that never had culverts, never meant to last past that one old-growth harvest and they sure did not!…Of course if I was sneaky and immoral and “smart” I could run my excavator right through the blue-line creek and rebuild those roads w/ no permits and pretend they were always still there. Indeed, I know growers who did exactly this and I don’t like them but of course our new “legalization” model has embraced these mega-industrial guys while pushing down the little guy. But I digress…
Mabel, I am obsessed with local history but have never heard of Moody, can you tell me anything about it?
Angie, this topic is going to scroll off the page soon, so hopefully this gets to you. First, I recommend the book “A Glance Back” by Margarite Cook and Diane Hawke. It is Norhtern Mendo history (though I know Hawk was a Humboldter), because Moody was just south of the county line. It was a logging town on a railroad that went from Andersonia (at Piercy) to Bear Harbor, mostly following Indian Creek. Before loggers wiped it with bulldozers in the ’90’s, you could find the railroad tracks there, some railroad trestles still standing, the town with a few mostly age-flattened buildings, and an old stone grave marker for old E.W. Lampkin reading, “E.W. Lampkin, aged 58 yrs, 9 mos, 11 days,” (but no date) which buddies of mine and I found while exploring the area. I heard it was all wiped away in that last logging.
The way we found Lampkin’s grave was a trip. My buddies and I had hiked out there in the mid-’80’s because there was an excellent swimming hole on Indian Creek that we loved, and there was a certain lure to exploring the old railroad and the Moody ghost town. When we got there, being young and full of the juices of life, we had some mushrooms. It was while tripping around that we discovered Lampkin’s grave. Actually, it seemed very much to us like we were drawn straight to it. That would have been a trip with or without the mushrooms, I can tell you. It even felt vaguely spooky. And, to be honest, given our circumstances, afterward I wasn’t entirely certain that it had happened at all. But the grave site was there, and we found it again on numerous subsequent trips. Never again, now…
That’s my experience with it. The book says Moody was built around 1898, starting with a few necessary buildings. Then a saloon was built by a guy named Lew Moody — and that must have been a good move because they named the new town after him. In 1903 the schoolhouse had 25 kids in it. It also says one of the teachers was Hattie M. Dyer (a Dyerville relation?). Lampkin himself was mentioned as working in a bark camp across Indian Creek from the town, and as I hear it (I don’t recall if it’s in the book), he drowned in the creek.
Mabel, this is amazing to read, it makes me excited being words!! I have found and explored many old homestead and town sites and always looking for more stories and links to the past. I wish I could have been there with you to find that grave…a once in a lifetime experience! Thank you so much for telling me more, I have bookmarked this to re-read it 🙂
Life it’s a JOURNEY
All mountian people KNOW!it’s past along.