![]() There was also a place called the Branding Iron Saloon. The main street, Redwood Drive, had the usual collection of shops and diners, a gas station and a theatre advertising an upcoming appearance by an English rock musician who’d been famous many years before. We gazed at each other in astonishment – it seemed incredible that such a place could exist. Over the years, federal agents, national guardsmen and even regular US Army soldiers had raided the farms, but the illegal trade persisted. We read grim news stories about dozens of people who had disappeared in unexplained circumstances. Conditions are said to be perfect for growing the crop, in the way that California’s Napa Valley and Burgundy in France are ideal for making wine. Humboldt and the adjoining Mendocino County and Trinity County form the Emerald Triangle, the country’s largest marijuana-growing area with 770,000 kilograms of cannabis produced per year, according to state regulators. ![]() For decades, illicit farms in the surrounding hills had been growing marijuana plants. ![]() Then it all became clear – we’d chanced upon America’s cannabis capital. We found a motel and checked in, then looked up Garberville, which is in Humboldt County, on the internet. We’d been to lots of small towns on this trip, but as we stepped out of the car the atmosphere in this one seemed different, stranger, less welcoming. It’s a small place with a population of around 900 – just a main street, some shops including a supermarket, and a few other little roads. The name meant nothing to us, but we decided to see if there was a motel there, so we turned off the highway and headed into town. We began to notice signs for a place up ahead called Garberville. We were starting to get the faint panicky feeling that happens when you’ve driven for long enough, it’s getting dark and you don’t have a room booked. We’d left the southern sunshine far behind, and the air felt cold in a way you don’t associate with California. The nearest major city, Oakland, is 350 kilometres away. It’s one of the places where the legendary wildman known as Bigfoot is said to have been seen. This is a remote, sparsely populated part of California, way up north and not far from the Oregon border. Now we were on US Route 101, known locally as the Redwoods Highway. We’d joined the route and then left it a number of times during an extended road trip through and across the state. Back on the road, we reached the end of State Route 1, the 1,000-kilometre coastal highway that stretches from Orange County in southern California to Mendocino County in the north.
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