NWP Tracks Over Old Highway

This short viaduct crosses the old Highway 101 route now called Walker Road, as the former Northwestern Pacific rails double back to climb the grade to Ridgewood Summit. From there, they descend Laughlin Ridge south to Redwood Valley and Ukiah, then on to Sonoma and Marin counties.

The local paper reported the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Report for starting freight service from near Santa Rosa up to Willits on these tracks, which is very good news indeed! It would be such a shame to lose this valuable infrastructure after all the work that was done to build it in the first place, more than a hundred years ago, and the North Coast Railroad Authority is working hard to move it forward.

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This post concludes one full year of Willits Daily Photo. When I started this blog on March 13, 2008, I had no idea where it would take me within Little Lake Valley, or if I could come up with 365 subjects to post. I feel amazingly blessed to have a new circle of international friends with city daily photo blogs of their own, offering insights and discoveries that enrich my perceptions of the world. Their kindness here in the comments has been immense, and I will treasure them always. I encourage everyone to see more City Daily Photo blogs at their portal website.

This a good point for me to retire Willits Daily Photo. There are more photos in my archives that I'd like to share, and more new pictures I'm sure I'll feel compelled to snap, but the time commitment of "every day" is more demanding than some might imagine. I'm not one to call this a "Daily" photo blog, and then not post daily. I want to keep learning and growing and building skills, and time is what I need for that. But, I have an alternative! Built into this blog is a link to my Willits Photo Overflow blog, and that's where I'll be posting additional images from time to time. They could be out-of-season, or different views of things already posted here, or entirely new images of Willits and Little Lake Valley, and possibly further afield. They will be posted sproadically and without warning, but if you would like to "follow" that blog to catch what comes up, you are more than welcome. It's my way of not having to go "cold turkey" on photo blogging altogether.

If you are new to this blog, and want to see what has been posted throughout the previous 365 days, you have several options. You can scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the words "Older Posts" on the lower right, and keep doing that as far back as you want to go. Or you can go to the sidebar (right column of this page) and find the Archives link, arranged by year and month (they can each be expanded by clicking on the little triangular arrows). Or you can go to the sidebar and look for the list of "Labels" to click on those for loosely categorized groups of posts for each idea. I expect to be expanding and refining that label list sometime soon.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your visits and comments.

Click here for Willits Photo Overflow.

Willits High School Hallway

The floor seems to float in the downstairs hallway of the old building at the high school. Generations of Willits Wolverines have had their stories of adolescent drama and despair, played out upon this stage. Hang in there, kids. Your brains are still growing, and better perspective will come soon enough. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Drinking Fountain

Before this most recent series of storms embraced us with welcomed rain, I explored a greenbelt trail up in Brooktrails. I hadn't realized they had an old parcourse, children's playground and this softball field along the way. Why am I featuring the drinking fountain? I just read in Wednesday's paper that, here in Little Lake Valley anyway, the water crisis has been averted by the water falling from the sky! Our supply reservoirs are nearly topped off, which should carry us through the coming dry season if we are sensible about its use.

Yay! Elaine will stop talking about drought all the time!

For Tomorrow's Archeologists

Remnants of technology gone by, these glass telephone line insulators lie near the abandoned railroad tracks crossing Walker Road, itself a remnant of old Highway 101. Chipped and broken, I suspect these are not collectible like the ones recycled by crafters for last year's Christmas fairs. I appreciate finding such treasures of the past, but would be glad to see all the overhead wires and cables go underground. Perhaps any kind of land-line will soon be obsolete.

Handicap Parking

With the redevelopment of a central city parking lot, regulations to supply handicap access took effect. It really is the right thing to do, jokes about "political correctness" and "too many rules" aside. Here, two parking spaces are specifically designated for specially equipped vans, with side lifts, for wheelchair using people to have room to get in and out of their vehicles. The curb of the sidewalk slopes down to accommodate them as well. I hope if I'm ever disabled, this kind of infrastructure will be in place, to allow me to interact with my community with a minimum dependence on others, with the self-determination that able-bodied people take for granted. I explain all this because readers from some other countries don't yet build this way.

This is another wall of the building you saw here and here.

Fire Training Tower

Here we are in February, and already we're thinking about, talking about, and preparing for extreme water limitations. And where there's drought, there's fire. Last summer's Lightning Complex fires showed how fragile the system is, and as big as those fires were, there's still plenty more to burn out there. With government budgets crashing from top to bottom, and water reserves practically nonexistent, I can't help but wonder where the resources will come from to protect us this year.

Meanwhile, anyone know what those 6000 pound blocks are for?

Sad news to report. Retired Little Lake Fire Chief Jeff Smith died Monday night. I hope he knew how much our community loved and admired him. He had been retired less than a year. Late edit: Jeff Smith's obituary in the paper.

February Theme Day: Paths and Passages

In yesterday's post, I mentioned three paths, and these are the other two. Here at the northernmost point in Little Lake Valley, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad crosses Outlet Creek through the gap in the hills. Alongside runs Highway 101, also crossing the creek via a bridge, and upon which I ventured on foot to risk getting yesterday's shot. Writing this, I realize I haven't made the passage out of the valley, in this direction, in probably two years. The trains no longer pass here, and it won't be long before the water below dries up too.

The first day of each month is always Theme Day among the hundreds of City Daily Photo Bloggers worldwide. Click here to view thumbnails and links for all those participants, and enjoy their interpretations of the theme.

Muir Lane

Muir Lane is actually an alley running behind business properties from the Van Hotel on Commercial Street, south to the Henry Baker Muir department store property now occupied by J.D. Redhouse. Reading a biographical sketch of the man from 1914, Muir was a shrewd businessman with his hand in lumbering, milling, retailing, banking, energy development, telecommunications, and land brokering. There's no mention of any relationship to John Muir, the noted conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club.

School Bus Loading Shelter

Blosser Lane Elementary School was pretty vacant last weekend, but it gave me a chance to show some of the farthest mountains to the east of us, viewed from the rising western edge of Little Lake Valley. The first ridges visible (see the gap on the right) are in the 2000-3000 foot elevation range, and are the only thing you see when in the center of the valley. (The valley itself is about 1300 feet above sea level.) Beyond those, the higher mountains of the inland Coast Ranges rise nearly 7000 feet at a few points. With any luck, the next two months will bring us cold, wet storms to deposit a thick "snow pack" up there. Our water supply, and the health of the streams and rivers, depends on that bank of frozen water to fill our reservoirs for the summer through fall dry season. The snow that has fallen so far has already melted away. I'll try not to worry.

Groovy Moss

These pavement grooves signal a change in the sidewalk's surface angle, as it slopes down to meet the street for crossing by wheelchairs or the visually impaired. They seem to provide secure footing for some moss as well, but the bits of lichen sprinkled about blew down from the trees in the rain and wind, and won't be sticking around.

MossySidewalkGroov Jigsaw Puzzle

Give Me Bus Shelter

A cold mass of air swept down on Willits yesterday from Canada and Alaska, bringing a short flurry of snow, so there will be no sitting in the park enjoying warm sunshine for a while. Fortunately for folks waiting for the MTA bus, this shelter at City Park offers some comfort in rain, hail, snow.

Food Bank

I'm thankful I still have enough to be able to give, and to be graced by those who will receive it.

I'm so thankful that my mother is vibrant and thriving in her own home over closer to the ocean, happy to be self-sufficient and able to meet her daily needs among the splendors of nature, near the village of her upbringing. That's where I'll be visiting for the next couple of days, so I'll be out of reach of any computers. I wish health and contentment to all my blog visitors around the world. I'm thankful for you as well.

Fresh and Clean

In contrast to yesterday's crumbled wall, this freshly molded walkway was installed between the Willits Center for the Arts and the Carnegie building, to allow cleaner access to the back door of the WCA. Such cultural organizations are already operating on a shoestring budget (very little money), and are wise to complete whatever repair and maintenance they can before funds get even tighter. I would have liked to see some autumn leaf imprints on this cement, but these guys seemed intent on cleaning all that away.

Parking Lot Re-Think

The Willits Post Office parking lot is notoriously difficult to navigate, consisting of four spaces facing east, and four facing west. Years ago, somebody decided to build this cinder block wall right up to the point of entrance, not imagining how soon cars need to swing around to miss hitting the vehicles parked behind them. Either all at once, or gradually, vehicles have helped to solve part of the constraint by knocking the corner of the fence down. This barrier now slopes back about three or four feet before resuming its original form. During weekdays at peak hours, you would be amazed at the dynamic maneuvering of cars and pedestrians that goes on here, in a community with a very high demand for post office boxes (thousands), in addition to the special transactions at the front counter. I'm glad I got a bike.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The "wheelie-bins" used for household solid waste disposal are gray with black hinged lids, and the curbside bins for mixed recycling (yes, we don't separate materials at home) are blue. Garden clippings and leaves go into a muted green bin. But if you want the exciting colors, take your excess cardboard, mixed paper, and glass right over to the solid waste transfer station. Convenient ramps lead right up to the tops of the truck-sized collection containers, neatly labeled for their proper contents.

It's true. Americans have a remarkably different idea of the fit of their clothes than Europeans do. We don't like anything too binding or snug. We like the blood to circulate easily to all the important places, with room to breathe.

Ivy on Utility Meters

With apologies, I'm feeling pressed for words, time, and pictures just now, so I dug this one out of my archives. It makes me think of Picasso's cubist faces.

Echoes of the Past

About five years ago, an extension to the Mendocino County Museum was completed, crowned with this big barn-like structure called the Engine House. The large matching doors on front and back reveal a punch-through of full scale railroad tracks that connect all the way back to the Roots of Motive Power restoration shed, and their now completed loop track. Roots volunteers were highly instrumental in getting the county to build the structure, and they themselves laid all the track through it. They also bring various pieces of rail equipment into the space for display and special events like the Steam Up I showed you in September.

Back when this building was done, I got talking with a former director of the museum about the structure. He said the design integrates elements from an old barn just on the west edge of town, from nearly a century ago. A then-young man named Mark Walker built the earlier barn with a tilted square window and clerestory section on the roof. Walker died in about 2001 at the age of 107, but had been a rich resource of local history and folk art for the museum's public historians up until then. It was in honor of his contributions that the architecture was made to reflect some of his work. I recently decided to get some photos of the old barn, to compare with the engine house.



The old barn still stands, but like many agricultural buildings of its generation, it is finally deteriorating and may not stand for many decades more. The owners of many of these barns could correctly claim that they were constructed from a single redwood. The ancient trees were gigantic, and redwoods are famously resistant to rot.

Veterans Memorial Building

Veterans Day, as you may also learn from many other North American and European City Daily Photo bloggers, is also known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, and marks the anniversary of the end of World War I. At the time the commemoration was instituted, I'm sure it was hoped that WWI was the War to End All Wars. Sadly, it was not, and now we remember our veterans from all wars, and honor those who survive.

The Veterans Memorial Building in Willits is a fine old meeting hall for veterans groups, and used to also house the local county court proceedings.

Waiting Out the Storm

A sharp-shinned hawk waited out a cool, light rain storm while overlooking the Gordon Logan Recreation Park a couple of days ago. I did not know Mr. Logan, but he is remembered as a great leader and mentor who could spot people's talents, and could make many an idle speculation on the part of others turn into completed and tangible assets for the City of Willits. He did not live to see the completion of these community sports fields, but he had everything to do with making them happen.

The weather has been incredibly generous, with intermittent but continual rain for all of the past week, and projected into the next.

November Theme Day: Books

Librarians are passionate about what they do. From the first free circulating library founded in Willits a hundred years ago, to the high tech, multi-format information transmission of today, librarians are on the front line of preserving a free and democratic society. Without each citizen being able to access anything in the universe of ideas, truly reasoned decisions based on individual evaluation cannot be made. If state or commercial entities are allowed to scrutinize who is reading what, or filter the available ideas through book bans and internet extortion, then the lights are snuffed out on democracy, and even civilization itself.

In this photo, a laptop computer user accesses the vast web of information, art, and ideas in all their variety around the world, by using the WiFi signal available from within the Willits branch of the county library system. Very often, cars and trucks are parked in this lot after hours, filled with people connecting to the internet at this wireless hot spot. I hope they know about Project Gutenberg and Librivox.

On the first day of each month, City Daily Photo Bloggers, like me, participate in a new theme together. There are so many ways of seeing and thinking about books around the world. Click here to view thumbnail photographs for all the City Daily Photo Blog Theme Day participants.