ELK, CALIFORNIA

'Elk' is an unincorporated town in Mendocino County, California with a population of 208. It is located on the coast at the crossroads of California Highway 1 and Philo-Greenwood Road. Albion, Little River, and Mendocino lie to the north, and Manchester and Point Arena to the south. Inland are Navarro, Philo, and Boonville.
Elk was originally called "Greenwood" after early homesteaders, the Greenwood brothers, sons of mountain man Caleb Greenwood, one of the rescuers of the Donner Party. When the post office was opened there was already another Greenwood in California so it was called Elk Post Office. Eventually the name came to refer to the town. It is an outgrowth of an earlier town called Cuffy's Cove and the cemetery is located at that townsite a mile north of Elk. When a pioneer lumberman was unable to reach a satisfactory deal with the owners of the lumber chutes at Cuffy's Cove to ship out his redwood product, he constructed a wharf out along a string of rocks in the center of what is now Elk. When he built a large steam sawmill and narrow gauge railroad, the new employment drained the town of Cuffy's Cove which was eventually abandoned. That mill was operated from about 1890 until 1930. When it closed in the depression Elk became a ghost town.
Another sawmill was built in about 1953 and one more in 1963. These operated until the late 1960s when the redwood and Douglas fir was mostly logged out. After some quiet times, the town has had a rebirth as a recreation destination. Many of the larger old houses are now Bed & Breakfast inns and the State has acquired the Greenwood Creek beach and the original mill site as a state park.

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★ Elk, CA Travel Information

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