Once in a while I take a walk along the road to Wingo at the south end of Sonoma Valley. Starting from the end of Millerick Road at Larson Family Winery, the old public access road is bordered by the tangled riparian corridor of Sonoma Creek on one side and hundreds of acres of vineyards on the other. Thickets of blackberry bushes grow along the channelized creek banks while big sprawling buckeyes reach to the sky. From here the landscape stretches out to the Bay and offers views up Valley to Sonoma Mountain and the Mayacamas.
It’s a good place for birding and to look for animal tracks in the mud after a rain. During the winter, I’ve spotted visiting merlins–small mostly gray and brown falcons about the size of a kestrel. Throughout the year, red-tailed hawks and coasting northern harriers hunt and nest along the creek and in nearby wetlands.
Once I walked all the way to Wingo and circled back on top of the weedy and overgrown levees. A pair of very upset harriers started screeching above me and dive bombing a bit too close to my head. While I never saw a nest, I got a great shot of one of the birds with my Iphone! I also got covered in ticks, so don’t recommend that particular route!
Another time my late partner Stan and I went down there to watch the October Hunter’s Moon rise. It is one of the few places in the Valley where the horizon isn’t blocked by the hills. We also picked up a bunch of walnuts from the ground to take home and crack. A special memory.
Another time, I discovered a beaver dam crossing the creek.
As most locals know, the area floods just about every year. Often the gate is closed across the road to Wingo in winter due to piles of tree limbs, rock and debris that washed down the creek and over the levees to block the road after major storms, now called atmospheric rivers. Lots of studies have been conducted but there doesn’t seem to be any easy fix to the problem.
In the past during dry parts of the year, you could drive down the road to Wingo, but when I was there a few weeks ago the gate was closed. I ran into a fellow ambler and his young son, who told me that he and his father used to fish here along the creek. Neither of us understood why the gate was closed in late summer, other than that some of the winter debris remained an obstacle for about 100 feet. So you can’t drive but you can easily walk and enjoy the scenery. Just park past the Larson Winery tasting room.
Long before the winery and the vineyards went in and the levees were built, Wingo was a steamboat stop known as Norfolk. Back then, the Bay reached all the way to the south end of the Valley. The railroad would also deliver passengers from San Francisco. The lands around Larson Family Winery were the longtime rodeo grounds owned and operated by the Millerick family. At one point in time, pronghorn and tule elk roamed the area; and perhaps even a grizzly or two. There’s lots of history here to discover, including on the Sonoma Valley Historical Society website https://sonomavalleyhistory.org/wingo/ Supervisor Susan Gorin wrote a piece for the Sun about Wingo a while back, too. https://sonomasun.com/2017/04/07/update-on-south-sonoma-valley/
Today most of the Wingo area is part of the protected Napa-Sonoma Marshes Wildlife Area https://wildlife.ca.gov/Lands/Places-to-Visit/Napa-Sonoma-Marshes-WA The California Department of Fish and Wildlife offers an overview map of the Wingo units as well as other public wetlands stretching across the Carneros to Napa and points east where you can walk, birdwatch, bike and also hunt.
What a wild Valley!
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