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A River Runs Through
It
—Eileen Hansen
 A
man's journey from doctor to innkeeper in Mendocino County began with dredging
old logs out of Big River.
On a typical rainy winter night in 1995, Dr. Arky
Ciancutti did what many Mendocino residents do in such conditions—he
sought shelter. Holed up in Dick's Place, a down-home bar nestled among scented
candle shops and tourist T-shirt retailers, Ciancutti was planning to have a
few beers and play a little pinball when two rough-hewn men sat down beside
him.
"These guys were straight out of ZZ Top," says
Ciancutti. "Long beards, lumberjack caps, camouflage coats and Arkansas accents
so thick you could cut 'em with a knife. Definitely not local."
But Ciancutti felt like he knew them. He'd been
watching them work for more than a month, retrofitting the bridge that spans
Big River, just south of town.
The men were building a cross-hatch support system to
earthquake-proof the bridge, and Ciancutti, a self-confessed "wood freak," was
particularly interested in their skill at fitting the broad fir beams.
Beers were poured and stories flowed, and after an
hour or two, one of the men leaned a little closer to Ciancutti. In hushed
tones he passed on some information that to a wood aficionado was the
equivalent of a detailed map to the Holy Grail. He told Ciancutti that they'd
been drilling deep into the riverbed—as far down as 38 feet—and they
were still bringing up wood shavings.
"Does it look like redwood?" asked Ciancutti. The man
nodded, and from that moment, Ciancutti's life took a different course.
But he was used to his life's suddenly taking new
courses—he'd been working as an emergency room doctor for years, when one
day in 1977 he decided to buy a run-down farmhouse in Mendocino, which he later
refurbished as an inn (doing a little management consulting in Marin to ensure
that ends met). To the casual onlooker these might appear to be curious career
moves; to Ciancutti, they made perfect sense.
"I learned a lot about teamwork in the emergency
room," he says. "I wanted to transfer that same knowledge to business." Hence,
consulting. As for the farmhouse, that was a little less logical. Ciancutti
says he knew the minute he saw the land that he had to buy it. A pastoral
10-acre site overlooking the coast, it has a rich history reaching back to the
1800s, when it was the county's first commercial vegetable farm, dairy and
brewery. Ever since he was a child, Ciancutti had dreamed of living in a house
near an orchard and by the ocean. This was it.
Ciancutti, then a single dad, moved to the farm with
his young children. He met a woman named Mac; they married and combined
families. Life was rosy for a few years, and then Mac was diagnosed with
cancer. The family moved back to the Bay Area for Mac's treatment, and
Ciancutti converted the Mendocino farmhouse into an inn as a place holder for a
life that he and Mac desperately wanted to return to. Mac died within a year,
but Ciancutti was determined to get back to the spot he considered home.
"There is something incredible about that land," says
Ciancutti. "It has an amazing microclimate—anything can grow there. I can
prune a fuchsia, stick a cutting in the ground, and it grows."
Ciancutti had left more than just fond memories in the
Mendocino farmland; an avid gardener, he'd planted hundreds of heirloom roses
throughout the property, thousands of daffodil bulbs, colorful fields of
rhododendrons, and garlic that could be traced back to seeds brought over by
his Italian ancestors. Ciancutti dreamed of returning to Mendocino, resettling
in the farmhouse, and building another inn on the property—but not just an
ordinary inn.
"I wanted to create a place that was as beautiful as
the setting," says Ciancutti. "I really didn't know how I'd do it, but when I
heard about the wood, it all became clear."
Ciancutti figured that if the logs buried in the
watery depths of the Big River were redwood, they were most likely first-growth
redwood felled in the days when Mendocino was a bustling mill town.
 Back in 1851, Harry Meiggs,
founder of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, sailed to Mendocino with a full
sawmill. Recognizing the opportunity that lay in the area's dense redwood
forests, he set up the mill and made Mendocino the Bay Area's primary source
for lumber. For the next 30 years, business boomed and more than 27 dams dotted
the Big River's waters. These dams caught and held the logs until enough
rainwater fell to drive them on to Meigg's mill at the river's mouth. Many of
the best bottom-cut logs—some of them up to 12 feet in diameter—sank
to the river floor, where they remained and got buried.
Ciancutti wasn't the first to hear of the logs, but
when it came to salvaging the wood, he was among the most determined. Pairing
up with a friend, Ciancutti worked through the winter, when the tides were
right and the river was swollen with water. Using only a skiff, a winch and
their own strength, they dredged the murky waters of the Big River.
Prize pieces of salvaged wood are known as pumpkins,
and right from the start, Ciancutti and his friend were finding them. "When I
saw that some of the wood had ax-shaved ends, I knew that it had been cut
before the late 1800s, when the Raker Tooth saw was invented," says Ciancutti.
There were a handful of others on the river with the
same idea. Some found logs more than 16 feet in diameter; Ciancutti felt lucky
to find a few that were 7 feet across. Several of his prize finds still have
the branded initials on the bottom, intended to identify their owners once the
logs floated down river to Meiggs' mill. Altogether, Ciancutti and his friend
salvaged nearly 30,000 board feet. Between salvaging, buying and
trading—sometimes with the men from Arkansas—Ciancutti had amassed
more than 180,000 feet of first- growth redwood by mid-1996. He was ready to
quit.
His timing couldn't have been better. Word of the
salvaging operations for "sinker logs" had reached the California Fish and Game
Department. In response to a 1998 court case, the department decided that any
salvaging project that had the potential to alter the stream bed had to undergo
environmental review. According to Steven Rae, Timber Harvest Program
supervisor for the Fish and Game Department, whatever wood had been there for
the taking was already gone.
"There was a small window of time when the value of
the wood and the relatively easy access to these sinker logs all came together
to form a kind of boom time," says Rae. "That's pretty much over now. It would
take some serious equipment at this point to salvage what's left. The economics
just don't work out."
Still, Ciancutti's buried treasure has held its value.
Not only is the wood extraordinarily beautiful, with its tight grain and
unusual variegated shades of blond, burgundy and rich cinnamon brown—a
result of more than 100 years in the mineral-rich water of Big River—but
with it, Ciancutti has built his dream inn.
The new Brewery Gulch Inn, which opened last month
[March, 2001], is a luxury 10-room bed and breakfast that showcases the wood in
its soaring lobby, private decks and picture windows framing dramatic ocean
views. A French-trained chef prepares gourmet breakfasts and afternoon hors
d'oeuvres. Guests can sample local wines at the wine bar, which also features
the wood. Ciancutti figures that he's used a third of his "eco-salvaged" wood
to build the inn; he's hanging on to the rest to build a small conference
center and greenhouse.
"I wanted to create a place where people could feel
like they're getting a month's vacation in a few days," says Ciancutti. "I
couldn't have done it without the wood. It's the perfect bridge between the
area's past and its present."
The Brewery Gulch Inn
The new Brewery Gulch Inn is located on the Pacific
Coast Highway, approximately a three-hour drive from San Francisco and just
five minutes from "downtown" Mendocino. Room rates range from $150-$295 a night
with a two-night weekend minimum. Gourmet breakfasts and afternoon hors
d'oeuvres are included. The inn is also available for small conferences,
weddings and special events. For more information, visit
www.brewerygulchinn.com, or call (800) 578-4454.
Activities on Big River
Exploring the Big River is a great way to enjoy
Mendocino without the crowds. At Catch a Canoe & Bicycles Too!
(707-937-0273), you can rent kayaks, outrigger canoes and bicycles for $14-$20
an hour. The inn can arrange a picnic lunch to take along, and there are plenty
of places to stop and relax. If you're lucky, you might see a few beavers doing
some serious salvage logging on the Big River. |
