Carlini Property

The Carlini Property is the site of the house, lakehouse, hunting cabin, chicken coop, and other structures built by the Carlini Family as it appears in "The Woods".

## Location

The property is located about twelve miles south of McCloud, California, accessible only by a dirt logging road, in one of the most remote locations in the state of California, Shasta-Trinity National Forest in the Klamath Mountains. The property does not fall into any municipality, but is located entirely in Shasta County, California.

## History

The Carlini property was originally occupied by the Pomo, an indigenous hunter-gatherer ethnolinguistic group, who used Shasta-Trinity Forest as hunting grounds.

In 1905, the newly formed US Forestry Service sold off the property for logging. It was bought, stripped of its trees, and then discarded, sitting vacant for some time. The property was part of the parcel purchased by the US National Park Service in 1945, with the intention of creating Shasta Forest National Park, but these plans fell through and the property was again sold to private loggers and stripped of its trees in 1947.

On September 12, 1964, an employee of the Shasta Logging Company named Jimbo Jonas was attacked by an unidentified creature near the property. Jonas' truck was run off the road, after which he was pulled through the truck, mauled, and killed. Jonas' remains sat for two weeks before his truck was discovered by another logging company employee driving Jonas' route for him.

The property was sold again in 1965 to Duke Atwood, a World War II veteran and hippie activist, who paid to improve the road access to the property, planning on creating a commune. However, the residents of Shasta County were by and large opposed to Atwood's lifestyle, and he ended up settling in the Bay Area. Atwood passed away suddenly in 1975. His family listed the property as for sale, but it sat empty for some time.

In 1982, the property was purchased and mortgaged for $45,000 by Nathan and Alice Carlini, who lived on the property from 1983 until following Nathan's death in 2001. During their time on the property, the Carlinis made many improvements, including a house, chicken coop, shed, hunting cabin, freshwater well, septic tank, improvements to the driveway, and a guest cabin. The property was the site of the mysterious disappearance of the Carlini's youngest child, Harmony.

## Description

The Carlini Property is primarily populated with new-growth pine forest. As the land was cleared as recently as 1947, none of the trees on the property are older than a few decades. The property sits in a valley, with hills climbing away on either side and a creek running through it that feeds into a swimming hole the kids refer to as "Trinity Lake" (not to be confused with the nearby, larger Lake Trinity), which then feeds into the McCloud River. The entirety of the property is surrounded by a decrepit barbed wire fence, which was probably installed by Atwood some time after 1965. In all, the property covers 1,235 acres of forest, or just shy of two square miles. With the exception of the hunting cabin, which sits about half a mile south of the main house, all the buildings on the property are situated within a few hundred feet of each other in the north-central portion of the property.