Shake City is an archaic placename in Mendocino County, California.[1] It is located on the California Western Railroad 6.25 miles (10 km) west-northwest of Willits,[2] at an elevation of 528 feet (161 m).[1] Circa 1916, a kind of logging operation called a bark camp was located at or near Shake City.[3] For a handful of years in the mid-1930s, the settlement supported a Mendocino County baseball team called the Shake City Loggers.[4] During the Great Depression years there was enough activity at the logging camp that it attracted vagrants: one unemployed man was charged with robbing a cabin near Shake City,[5] and an "unknown tramp" walking from Fort Bragg was killed on the railroad tracks.[6] Famed forestry professor Emanuel Fritz photographed a 17 foot (5.2 m)-diameter redwood stump from a tree logged near Shake City.[7] There was a railroad tie production facility at Shake City in 1937.[8] The railroad trestle at Shake City burned in 1941 but was promptly repaired.[9] By 1960, Shake City was still a name on a map but its history was a mystery to a Petuluma newspaper columnist.[10] In 1967, Union Lumber Company owned timber stands near Shake City.[11]
^Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 141. ISBN1-884995-14-4.
