Mendo
How an Unlikely Group of Rebels Turned Cannabis into California's Cash Crop
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 23, 2026
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A whip-smart and entertaining work of narrative history that shows how an unlikely partnership borne of necessity spawned a lucrative marijuana industry that changed the world
California's homegrown weed industry helped launch the solar power industry, and that's not all. Mendocino county—or Mendo—sits within California’s Emerald Triangle, a sprawling, sparsely populated region that has produced billions of dollars’ worth of weed, and since the 1970s, virtually every inhabitant has either been involved in the pot trade or been a beneficiary of it—including the government.
Mendo was formed by the confluence of back-to-the-land hippies fleeing San Francisco and longtime locals who held more traditional, conservative beliefs. These two groups shared little in common beyond a strong antiauthoritarian streak and a need to create new opportunities after the logging industry retreated from the region. A tight-knit, backwoods, outlaw culture arose from this uncommon alliance. Mendo tells the fascinating and often humorous story of how, for over fifty years, this cabal of iconoclastic characters not only sustained the county through the illegal cultivation of marijuana, but also developed a legal framework that has been adopted in decriminalization efforts across the United States.
Today, Mendo is again on the precipice of economic ruin as the weed industry emerges from the shadows, mirroring challenges faced across the nation where traditional industries that have long sustained working-class communities are in decline, causing suffering, economic strife, and political divisiveness. Mendo, just like the nation, is fighting to find itself in the twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oxford University researcher Harris debuts with a freewheeling history of the grassroots marijuana industry in California's rural Mendocino County. Marijuana first arrived in the "vast, remote, rugged" county in the late 1960s with a cadre of idealistic hippies who decamped from San Francisco. Part of the back-to-the-land movement, these mostly white, middle-class newcomers purchased cheap land that had no electricity or running water but the ideal conditions for growing pot. Harris follows the rapid transformation of the Mendocino marijuana trade, from personal plots and a local barter economy to, by the late 1970s, a lucrative industry illicitly expanding deep into the forest. Harris also traces the trade's impact on the region's preexisting community—including skeptical rednecks, unfairly overpoliced Native Americans, and surprisingly permissive, libertarian-leaning local law enforcement—as well as the hard-lined federal anti-drug crackdowns of the 1980s. The latter makes for riveting reading as Harris vividly spotlights both the militarized overkill of Reagan-era raids, which used tactics seemingly derived from the Vietnam War ("Camouflaged National Guard members buzzed the forests in Hueys, assault rifles slung and ready") and the growers' clever countermeasures, including booby traps. Throughout, he highlights captivatingly eccentric local characters—one grower claimed he had "contact with extraterrestrial visitors eleven times"—as well changes brought about by legalization. It makes for a raucous look at the renegades that built the Emerald Triangle.
