Casket Rock is the outermost of three large rocks west of Elk, a community about 22 miles (35 km) south-southeast of Fort Bragg and 13 miles (21 km) north of Point Arena, California. Elk was originally called Greenwood, after an early homesteading family. When the post office opened in 1887, another Greenwood already existed in California, so the new office was designated Elk Post Office at Greenwood. Eventually, the town’s name was shortened to Elk.

Elk replaced the neighboring community of Cuffy’s Cove as the center of the local timber industry after pioneer lumberman Lorenzo E. White failed to reach a satisfactory deal with the owners of the lumber chutes there. To export redwood lumber, the L.E. White Lumber Company built a wharf from Elk along a string of offshore rocks to deep water where lumber schooners could anchor. At the wharf’s end, lumber was loaded onto a wire cable and winched out to the moored schooners—a considerable feat of engineering.

The local redwood lumber industry collapsed when the uninsured sawmill burned down in 1936. Replacement mills were built around 1953 and 1963, and operated until the late 1960s, when the redwood and Douglas fir were mostly logged out. The town was reborn as a recreation destination; many of its larger older houses are now private inns. In 1978 the state acquired Greenwood Creek beach and the original mill site, preserving them as a state park. Read more here and here. Explore more of Casket Rock and Elk here: