Caspar is a census-designated place in Mendocino County, California. It is located on the Pacific Ocean, 4mi north of Mendocino, at an elevation of 82ft. It is bounded on three sides by state parks: the historic 1909 Point Cabrillo Light Station is nearby to the south, Jug Handle State Natural Reserve lies to the north, and its coast forms Caspar Headlands State Beach. The population was 509 at the 2010 census.HistoryCaspar was settled in 1857 by Siegfried Caspar, who later sold the land to Jacob Green Jackson, one of the founders of the Caspar Lumber Company which turned Caspar into a significant logging town in Northern California from 1864 to 1955. Pilings from the mill can be seen on Caspar Beach, located south of the community. The mill was featured on the cover of a 1938 National Geographic magazine.Multiple heirs to the Caspar Lumber Company sold their holdings to Georgia Pacific and a pair of private investors in 1989. Ownership of the central parcels, consisting of more than 300 acres and comprising much of "downtown Caspar," was taken over by the Caspar Cattle Company in 1997. The company's principal immediately offered the land for sale. This offer reportedly "spark debate and discussion in the sometimes divided community" but it was an orderly community process, facilitated by a professor and team of graduate student community planners from the University of California, Berkeley. The process early on committed to consensus and inclusive self-governance, and identified several sacred spaces, principal among them the headlands, once the site of the Caspar Lumber Company's mill, and successfully managed the acquisition of the 30acre headlands parcel in partnership with the Trust for Public Land and the Mendocino Land Trust which acquired the adjoining beach in 1999. Funded by a California State Coastal Conservancy grant in May, 2000, as well as state and federal funds, the headlands were transferred to California State Parks and designated as Caspar Headlands State Reserve in June 2002.
