Named Ashokawna—“the water to the east”—by the Southern Pomo. Slavyanka, “slavic woman,” by the Russian Colony. “Saint Ignatius” and “big river” by the Spanish colonists who came after. The river itself remains nameless, and mighty, winding 115 miles to the sea.
It drains 1,500 square miles of Mendocino and Sonoma counties, fed by 240 tributary streams and creeks. It fills Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma, our drinking reservoirs and the aquifers beneath them. It waters vineland and timberland. Each year, it pours an average of 1.5 million acre-feet into the ocean at Jenner.
An estimated 30 to 40% of Mendocino and Sonoma jobs depend on it, directly or indirectly…