Access to Remote Gem, Usal Beach, Closed!
A beloved but remote area of the northern Mendocino Coast is now completely inaccessible after county authorities closed the only road. This cutt off access to the Usal Beach campground and surrounding wilderness.
The Mendocino County Department of Transportation has announced that Usal Road (County Road 431) from milepost 0.00 to milepost 27.95 is closed until further notice, with no estimated reopening date and no access to the beach or campground during the closure.
This affects the only public route to Usal Beach and Usal Beach Campground, a primitive camping area within the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park that draws locals and outdoor enthusiasts from across Northern California for its coastal views and opportunities to interact with everything from unique trees to elk.
Usal Beach sits at the southern edge of the Lost Coast, a stretch of coastline known for its dark sand beaches.
While county authorities did not give a specific cause for the current closure, the recent storms probably caused the problems. In past years, sections of Usal Road have been shut during wet weather to protect the roadbed from damage and to ensure public safety due to mud, ruts, and landslide risks.
The loss of a way into Usal Beach’s primitive campground is a blow to those who use the area as a gateway to the famed Lost Coast Trail.SinkyoneWildernessWeb2016
Visitors should check with Mendocino County DOT and California State Parks for the latest information on road conditions and park access before planning future trips. With no estimated time for reopening, the closure could through winter maybe even early spri
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damn
Once a thriving community with a sawmill, logging operation, redwood split stuff camp, store, hotels, and housing.
I have pictures of the local Garberville Van Hoy Union 76 distributer delivering fuel to Usal, back when there was still a mill operation there.
Two of my ancestors had a split stuff operation there. My family has blood in that canyon.
When my wife and I were dating we used to go out and catch surf fish and nightfish there. Good times. We even ran into Neil Kemp a few times.
I love it out there one of my all time favorite places. My husband and I still get surf and night fish there every so often.
As kids, along Ernie Totten, Butch Crawford, my Dad and Neil Kemp, we would find and dig through the old trash dumps out at Usal (Old Dollar Logging Company site). Neil was the best at finding old bottles, he had a hell of a collection of turn of the century purple glass medicine bottles.
When the Salmon Fleet came in to anchor, there might be over a hundred mast lights to be seen swaying in the “bite” called Usal.
Tree fell across the main road… not a priority to remove tree.
This road is non-passable in winter anyway.
Oh yea. From Rockport to that cool little triple junction at the Headwaters of the Mattole. Which runs backwards. So close yet so far. Good times.
This used to be a yearly occurrence when I was a kid
You used to be able to drive from Rockport to Whitethorn when I was kid. Only it was just called Thorn then.
you still could in the early 90s we drove it in a datsun 510 wagon on valentines day in 1991 from Rockport to thorn
I think you still can. I was at Sinkyone visitor center this summer and spoke with someone who’d driven there via the Usal road in a RAV4.
This is absolutely sickening. As a local tribal member of a coastal tribe, our connection to this place is spiritual, cultural, and vital to our survival. We rely on these waters and lands for fishing, for sustenance, and for passing our traditions to our children.
It’s heartbreaking to see what people who have no respect for the land or understanding of its meaning, have done to one of my family’s most sacred places. This is not just a destination… Its home.
We visit every single year as a family to connect with nature, to surf fish, and to teach our babies the same values our ancestors taught us. My husband has been coming here since childhood. Generations of love, memory, and responsibility live in this place.
Seeing it treated with such disregard hurts!!! This land deserves protection, respect, and care, not exploitation!!!
Settle down. It is likely a storm related closure.
Lacking further information, your 1000 word essay is a massive overreaction.
I’m not lacking information. I know exactly why this road gets worse every single year. This isn’t just normal wear and tear. Anyone who truly knows Usal knows this. [edit]
Her comment was 144 words, actually, not “1000.” A fact I pointed 2 days ago which, for unknown reasons was given the big delete while your dismissive jab at Mary remains.
And really, in revisiting your thoughtful 🙄 contribution to this mundane discussion on a road closure, ffs, “settle down”? In the long, sexist history of telling women to settle down, has that ever worked?
It’s obviously an attempt at being controlling and dismissive and I have to ask anyone within earshot, how did it contribute to thoughtful exchange?
People are here to discuss ideas not get tone-policed and openly invalidated and literally patronized into silence! Wthell! Settle down, you.
Also, calling her thoughtful reply a “massive overreaction” was just another attempt at invalidating Mary’s remarks and an obvious weak deflection from the real point: respect for sacred land and the people connected to it.
Funny how empathy and a thoughtful contribution seems to rattle some people more than actual harm, and the chosen course of action is replying with exaggerated claims (seriously, tell me you’ve never written a thousand word essay without telling me you’ve never written a thousand word essay) and demand the fellow reader to “settle down?”
It really drags down the vibe.
Please understand that I know the pain of the disrespect that some folks have for the land and many other things. There was no road “Generations” ago. The Whiteman built the road with Chinese labor.
I have lost many things that you might have called sacred. Even though I am white, I am very different from the people that moved here in the 70’s and beyond. However they brought the good with the bad. Change is difficult. I am a fifth generation that visited Usal Gulch. Change Happens, you can’t change it.
There are two groups of people who are referred to as ‘white’ ( The ones who owned all the slave and new world boats and the poors who they stuffed in them as indentured servants ) , there is no such culture as white however. Besides they where promised the right to do this long ago. Game out all the endgame scenarios and wonder how will all the concessions pushed down the pike be revisioned by the incomming conquerors. Did you imagine it would be ‘privilidged minorities from here’ who end up calling the shots? I suspect it will be clerics. God willing.
The die has been cast.
I think that America has become wise to the “incoming conquerors”. America is very welcoming to people coming here that want come here legally and contribute to the American dream.
Criminals and ne’er-do-wells are no longer welcome. I’m always suspicious of people that think God is on their side.
Didn’t “your people” make the trek on foot?
Absolutely!
Well, this closure should keep the tourists and yahoos away for a while and give the land a little break from the noise and destruction of vehicle traffic.
I cant fathom how a traditional primative culturalist could see closing a road as a bad thing. This is literally the full measure of winning for the land, you can still hike the 27 miles i assume the wilderness isn’t closed just the county road, peak land back outcome i would assume, although i have not heard a concise full plan for that, is it more casinos and smoke shops in a tax free trust or a return to pre agrarian ways of being that the ‘movement’ moves toward.
Having been a perm usal resident since 2007(one of 2). I have never once, not one single time, ran into any native americans that were not relatives coming to visit my hut. I mean no offense by this but there is zero tribal activity on usal. I have ran into the nuns a few time, its been many years though. There were a very few gorrilla growers backside barnum back in the day but they are all long long gone. There was less than 100 “visitors” in 2025 that went past the south winter gate they put in. The original native encampments are inland and you could spend a lifetime looking.
Aww yes, the classic ‘I personally haven’t seen it, so it must not exist’ argument. Indigenous presence and connection don’t require your observation or approval to be real. Cultural, spiritual, and historical ties aren’t erased because they’re quiet, inland, seasonal, or not happening outside your hut since 2007. Usal didn’t begin when you arrived, and it doesn’t end at what you happen to notice.
Where were your “cultural, spirtual and historical” ties when the banks bought usal and bailed out the timber companies? Ahhh… u.s.a.l. rd.
The last natives on usal were… in the spanish exploration era.
Cultural and spiritual ties don’t vanish because banks bought land or roads were renamed. Colonization didn’t end Indigenous presence, it just stopped recording it.
“Spanish exploration era” means first documented by colonizers, not last Native connection. Big difference!!!
You can still walk there, like they did for centuries.
Up hill both ways!
Maybe like access to the Tall Trees Grove near Orick, there should be registered, limited seasonal access with a combination lock on a gate. That would limit access to people really want to go there and know the conditions and hazards.
This closure is a blow to the MMERP program where Cal Poly Humboldt Marine Biologists are monitoring the washed up marine mammals there and at Jones Beach…also closed.