‘Molino’ name comes from mill built on creek

Molino is an unincorporated community on Highway 116 between Sebastopol and Forestville. Its name comes from the Rancho El Molino, granted to John Cooper in 1833. Molino means “mill” in Spanish; the rancho was named for a sawmill Cooper built on Mark West Creek just above its confluence with the Russian River.

Constructed in 1834, “Cooper’s Mill” is believed to have been California’s first commercial lumber mill. Located 30 miles northwest of Sonoma, it was quite remote at the time. Considering the difficulties transporting lumber in a place without roads, it seems a strange spot for such an operation.

But 1834 was also the year Mariano Vallejo arrived in Sonoma with instructions to establish a stronger presence on Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Part of the government’s plan was to found a new settlement as a buffer against the Russians, who were expanding their colony inland. The settlement’s chosen site was just a mile from the mill, which was intended to supply lumber for the endeavor. Up until the 1830s, California’s lumber, what little there was, was made by hand with saws or adzes. At Cooper’s Mill, the waters of Mark West Creek turned a wheel that powered a vertical saw blade that could do the work of 10 men.

While a few buildings were constructed, the settlement was abandoned within a year, and Cooper’s Mill was destroyed by a flood in 1841. By then, Vallejo had built his own water-powered sawmill closer to Sonoma, supplied by the forests on Sonoma Mountain.

In 1846, Stephen Smith, the owner of Rancho Bodega, imported California’s first steam engine to run a lumber mill in the west county.

Ironically, Smith’s Mill, like Cooper’s was destroyed by its own power source when it caught fire in 1855. Vallejo’s sawmill ran until all the merchantable timber on Sonoma Mountain had been logged off. Then he sold it to Joshua Chauvet, who converted it to a grist mill. Flour also was an important commodity in the county’s early days.

By 1877, Sonoma County had 14 sawmills. Within a few decades, so much timberland had been cut that many shut down for lack of trees. But trees are resilient, and the forests slowly returned as second growth. By World War II, those forests were big enough to cut again and more than 20 mills geared up to supply lumber for the postwar boom.

Two commercial mills remain today. One is family-owned Berry’s Mill in Cazadero; the other is Cloverdale’s Redwood Empire Lumber Mill. While those are modern facilities, the 19th-century stubbornly lives on at steam-powered Sturgeon’s Mill near Sebastopol. A working museum run by volunteers, it is open to the public four times a year. See sturgeonsmill.com for details.