Ten Mile River is a river in northern Mendocino County, California, United States. It is named for the fact that its mouth is north of the mouth of the Noyo River. The middle and north forks of the river are each 15mi long, and the river extends for seven more miles from their confluence to its mouth, on the Pacific Ocean. The watershed of Ten Mile River is neighbored on the south by the Noyo River and on the east and north by the South Fork Eel River. of salt marsh provide a habitat for many birds. Ten Mile Beach, in MacKerricher State Park, extends approximately five miles southward from the mouth of the river to Cleone, including approximately of what has been called California's "most pristine stretch of sand dunes."HistoryThe Ten Mile River basin has been logged continuously since the early 1870s. At first, trees were cut using single-bladed axes and dragged by oxen to mills at Fort Bragg, ten miles to the south. Railroad lines were introduced on the South Fork in 1910 and on the other parts of the river in the 1920s. In the 1930s, the railroads were replaced by tractor roads; after the passage of the California Forest Practice Act in 1973, tractor logging on steeper slopes was supplanted by more environmentally friendly practices such as the use of cables. The timber on both sides of the river was logged by the Georgia Pacific Company until 1999, when Georgia-Pacific's holdings in the area were acquired by the Hawthorne Timber Company. Timber in the area is logged on a 60-year rotation.
