Francesca Scalpi

JENNER (Click on thumbnail for full image)
Jenner by the Sea is located where the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean. Jenner's history began in 1867 when John Rule purchased 4,000 acres of the California coast as part of a land grant from the Spanish. Jenner had a a lumber mill and small village sprang up at the foot of Jenner Gulch. By the turn of the twentieth century, lumber schooners were stopping there and a school and post office were established.

It is 1969, and the Utah Mining and Construction Company has obtained permits to dredge a million cubic yards of gravel a year for 20 years from the mouth of the Russian River, with a channel 200 feet wide to accommodate ocean-going barges. There are plans to create a tourist Mecca nearby, with motels, restaurants, shops, condominiums and marinas.

Jenner residents Virginia Hechtman, Elinor Twohy and other Jenner residents took there cause all the way to the federal Department of the Interior before the dredging permits were eventually revoked.

Bill Kortum, the father of Sonoma County’s environmental movement. Kortum fought to stop Malibu-type development along the Sonoma Coast, and authored Prop. 20, which passed in 1972 creating the California Coastal Preservation Act. The Jenner Coalition supported him as well.

Elinor Twohy was instrumental to the banning of dogs from the north end of Goat Rock Beach and to the founding of Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, whose volunteers stand post to protect and educate about the seals.

Elinor Twohy was among several activists who got the Jenner Seal Watch program off the ground in the mid-1980s. It's now run by nonprofit Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, through which volunteer docents stand guard on weekends to keep visitors at a proper distance from the colony.

Visitors can hike rugged hillsides, paddle in the Jenner estuary, stroll along many ocean side trails, watch resident harbor seals while they stay in many riverside cabins.