Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Cazadero, CA

Cazadero is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in western Sonoma County - its name is Spanish for 'hunting ground.'

The village sits along Austin Creek near its confluence with the Russian River, reached by Cazadero Highway from State Route 116, in the hills of the Sonoma Coast wine country.

Cazadero was the northern terminus of the narrow-gauge North Pacific Coast Railroad, laid in the 1870s, where logs from a web of smaller logging railroads were gathered and sent to Duncans Mill and on to San Francisco.

Local legend holds that much of San Francisco was rebuilt with Cazadero redwood after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and Cazadero timbers were also used as pilings for the old eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Cazadero is reputed to be the second-wettest town in California, after Gasquet, averaging about 85 inches of rain a year as Pacific storms dump their moisture on the steep coastal hills.

The 2020 census counted 298 residents in the Cazadero CDP, down from 354 in 2010, living in 146 households with an average size of just 2.04 people.

Of Cazadero's 245 housing units in 2020, only about 60 percent were occupied year-round and over 70 percent of the occupied homes were owner-occupied, and the community's median age was 53.8 years.

Tiny downtown Cazadero consists of two churches, a general store, a post office, a hardware store, an auto repair garage and the Cazadero Volunteer Fire Department.

Logging built Cazadero, but after the area's mills fell on hard times in the 1990s, only one small sawmill remains in operation today.

The redwoods around Cazadero host well-known summer camps, including the Boy Scouts' Camp Royaneh and the Cazadero Performing Arts Camp.