Charlie Harris

Mendo

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.