Tiny Venado in Sonoma County, famous for its rain report

VENADO - There it was, the infamous rain gauge of Venado.

The gauge that records some of Sonoma County's heaviest rainfall sits inside locked cyclone fencing in a clearing on a steep, remote ridge in the middle of breathtaking forest land.

Venado is kept in the public mind by National Weather Service forecasters who routinely report rainfall from the sophisticated automated rain bucket. Its precipitation rivals Cazadero's champion totals - measurements echoed by Bay Area TV meteorologists who rattle off regional storm results, listing Venado as if it's a widely known community in Sonoma County.

As if it's real.

But is it?

And just where the heck is Venado?

“Venado is … I don't know exactly where it is,” said 16-year Healdsburg resident George Heath, who initially thought it might be the name of a new restaurant in town.

“I've never even heard of it,” he subsequently admitted.

Holladay Duncan, who has lived in Healdsburg for more than two decades, also pleaded ignorance. “I bet you could ask any number of people and they wouldn't know where it is,” he said.

Duncan was right. While local history buffs and multigenerational residents such as Bonnie Pitkin and Nathaniel Dodge pass the “Where's Venado?” test, the question stumped numerous others.

Those unable to immediately locate the town included local public safety officials and even the supervisor representing the north county.

Supervisor James Gore, a Venado visitor on occasion, figured it out once he was given a clue.

“I know the place,” Gore said. “I never knew what it was called.”

It's hard to ding them, as a trip in search of Venado revealed it to be more mythical place than reality.

About 10 miles west of Healdsburg, along Mill Creek and Mill Creek Road, Venado is a ghost of a once-thriving tiny timber and mining community dating to the 1800s.

The community ramped up in about 1850 with a lumber mill and began to wane some 100 years later with the 1951 closing of the one-room schoolhouse. It was officially called “Venado” in 1922 with the opening of its post office, which closed in 1941. The name was taken from a nearby ranch, El Venado, which is Spanish for both deer and venison.

Even in its heyday, the town never was in public view, tucked under a thick canopy of redwoods, tanoaks and maples and hidden all those miles deep into steep hills that separate it from Armstrong Woods.

These days, “Venahdo” - don't call it “Venaydo” - is a collection of scattered ranches, residences and old cabins. Few remnants of the old community exist.

There are no signs. The main landmark is the historic schoolhouse, called Daniels School, which fell into ruin after closing and currently is the focus of fundraising for restoration.

The other “public” building is the post office, closed almost 75 years. Its sign was stolen years ago, though it later turned up at a garage sale and now is at the Healdsburg Museum. The diminutive, redwood-shingled structure appears to be nothing more than an intriguing shack between the narrow road's edge and now- gushing Mill Creek.

“That's it. It's not much,” Bonnie Pitkin said on a recent Venado tour.

While Venado officialy faded into the past years ago, it's very real for Pitkin, who attended the small schoolhouse and whose grandparents homesteaded there in 1915. ”Our address is Healdsburg, but we think of it as Venado. For those who have lived up here, it'll always be Venado.”

Pitkin harbors hopes that a restored schoolhouse will give the community more prominence as a public meeting spot and a field trip destination for schoolkids.

But for now, Venado's fame comes from its rainfall.

It's probably second to Cazadero for rainiest spot in Sonoma County, said Bob Benjamin, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Monterey and the keeper of the historical records of the region's longstanding weather stations.

This week, 3 inches fell in Venado during Tuesday morning's deluge, and since Oct. 1, it's had 47 inches, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Cazadero has had 37.61, according to the National Weather Service.

Venado's celebrated rain gauge sits at 1,260 feet above sea level on the old Dodge ranch. It's obscured from view and not accessible to the public. The land has been in Nathaniel Dodge's family for three generations, going back into the 1800s.

It's been an official reporting station for the weather service since Dec. 8, 1939, when the agency began paying John B. Harper $10 four times a year to report rainfall there, Benjamin said.

The years of information represent an important weather analytical tool and a historical reference regarding the particularly powerful watershed, which stems from the headwaters of Mill Creek and feeds into the Russian River, Benjamin said.

The equipment has evolved. The old manual rain gauge gave way decades ago to an automated upgrade. “That was replaced by a supersonic whiz-bang thing in there now,” Dodge said.

Three agencies use the buckets: the National Weather Service, the Sonoma County Water Agency and the state Department of Water Resources. The agencies have different priorities regarding Venado's weather. There's real-time rainfall reported by the state, and there are climate forecasting needs and historical records kept by the weather service. The information has helped during critical storms, when Sonoma County water officials look to forecast Russian River flooding, Benjamin said.

Since 1995, Benjamin has twice a year made the long trek from the weather service office in Monterey to Venado to check the weather equipment, while a Sonoma County Water Agency technician goes monthly to empty the bucket if need be and download the rainfall data. Benjamin said he's always taken by the forested scene.

“You know Bigfoot is going to come out and greet you at some point,” he said.

It was Benjamin who labeled the weather station “infamous” - because of how often he's asked “Where's Venado?” by reporters seeking Sonoma County rainfall.

Improved computer programming helped fuel Venado's recent prominence among the ranks of reported rainfall totals, as technology has made the totals from the outpost more readily available to meteorologists.

Rainfall in the bucket is updated every 15 minutes online on the State Department of Water Resources website, where Venado is listed as VNOC1.

It surprised Bonnie and Richard Pitkin the first time they heard their woodsy burg in weather news, but she said she also felt proud.

Dodge acknowledged, however, that the bucket's prominence in newscasts gives a false impression there is an actual place people can go, called Venado.

“People come looking for the gas station, the general store,” Dodge said. “There's nothing there except us.”

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com.