Prior to 1850, the Pomo Indians were the only inhabitants of the Anchor Bay area. They had a village of some seventy-five people near Point Arena up from the ocean on the Garcia river with many scattered groups and families up and down the coast.

Early settlers approaching Anchor Bay

In 1844 the Mexican government made a large land grant to Rafael Garcia encompassing the entire Mendocino coast from Gualala to Elk. Garcia brought in cattle and began ranching. In 1858 he sold out to Jose Leandro Luco for the sum of $10,000. Eventually other settlers began trickling in. The first of these, three cattlemen from Yolo county, arrived in 1855. The new settlers either bought land from Luco or merely "squatted," believing the original Garcia grant would not survive legal challenge. Thus the land around Anchor Bay was already being subdivided before the Supreme Court, in 1861, invalidated the grant . By that time about one-thousand people lived in the area.

Loggers in 1870

The first shipping records in San Francisco show the name as Fishing Rock. On May 13, 1861 the right to construct, maintain, and use a wharf at Fishing Rocks in the county of Mendocino was granted to Mart T. Smith and his associates for the term of fifteen years. In 1864 Russel Stevens ran a mill at Fish Rock Gulch with a capacity of fifteen- to eighteen-thousand board feet daily. Jim McNamee, an old-time resident, recalls that the old mill burned "Like 90% of the sawmills did burn." The first franchise for a chute (for loading ships) at Fish Rock was given to E. J. Stevens March 26, 1866. Whether he constructed his chute is not known. On February 27, 1870 a franchise for a landing and chute was granted to Wm. S. Ferguson for the term of twenty years. Ferguson Gulch is named for this man.

Anchor Bay in 1888 Looking south over town

"Anchor Bay, as a name, was not used until about 1915", recalls Jim McNamee. "Young Dave Berry, Dave Berry's son, was fixing up the place. His father was getting old. He called it Anchor Bay. He put up the sign and the anchor which he hand carved. Berry bought the place from a man named Meagher. Berry came to Gualala from Fort Ross. He had a blacksmith shop in Gualala for quite a few years. Originally he came from Switzerland. Berry also had a blacksmith shop in the building which was the pottery in Anchor Bay. They had pottery, bricks, alot of things made out of clay, but it wasn't very good clay. It came from where the bulk of the Mar Vista buildings are now."

Dave Berry's original Anchor Bay Store in 1915

In 1922, after a number of years as chief engineer on the large ships for United Fruit and Pacific Mail Lines, William S. Pierce decided he would like the quiet life of the country. He answered an ad in the S. F. Examiner, sold the family home in South San Francisco, and moved his family to a farm of one-hundred sixty acres, including four acres of apples and pears. This farm was called "The Corcoran Place" and was located in what is now known as Enchanted Meadows. The move was made with the help of an old Model "T" Ford truck and was a long and rough trip on the dirt roads of the coast at that time.
On arrival at the farm with his family - his wife Dora and three sons, William A., Millard E., and Norman S.- he set about learning how to make a living in the new and strange life of the country. In 1924 Mr. Dave Berry, who was getting very old and owned the original store at a site in front of the present Mar Vista motel, was killed by his pet bull. His daughter, Ruby Windlinx of Fort Bragg, asked William Pierce to live in the house attached to the store and be caretaker of the property. "We moved down the hill to the store", says Norm Pierce, "with one hundred dollars worth of groceries, started in the storekeeping business."
Norm continues, "In 1925, our dad bought the property called 'The St. Ores Place'. It consisted of two-hundred fourty acres, a large house and barn, together with a meadow in Fish Rock Gulch which is now the Anchor Bay Campground. The price of this farm was thirty-five hundred dollars. By clearing the brush and putting in a small bridge across the stream, we were in the campgrounds business."

In 1926 and '27, the Pierce family built the store and house at Anchor Bay and moved to their own place. Around 1946 Norman Pierce moved back to Anchor Bay at the request of his family and went to work on the town. He enlarged the campgrounds and cut the bank away were the store now stands hauling the dirt across the highway to make a large fill upon which he built the old Shell station in 1953. In 1954 William Pierce passed away. After the division of the property between his brother bill and he, Norman began to tear down the old buildings and replace them with cement block. Norman operated several of the town's businesses until they could be leased to local business people. In 1969 Norm Pierce finally sold the town and most of his property and moved to Nevada.

The rest, as they say, is history.....

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