The Insanity Of The Willits Bypass

As with so many places in the American West that have been struck by the flash-flood of capitalist development since the mid-19th century, that which is most absent from the contemporary landscape of Little Lake Valley — aka the Willits Valley — is encapsulated by its name. It is a valley that once teemed with wetlands, marshy areas that formed when the area’s once-lively streams overflowed their banks and scoured the surrounding meadows with moisture and nutrients. The Central Pomo people knew the area by the evocatively intimate name Mto’m-kai, which closely translates to “Valley of Water Splashing the Toes.”