The hook
An isolated valley town invented its own language in the 1890s, some 1,600 words of it, and spent the next century speaking a tongue nobody outside could follow.
01Why it's worth it
Around 1890, shut off in the hop fields and logging camps of Anderson Valley, the people of Boonville started making up their own words, and it grew into Boontling: a full folk argot of roughly 1,600 terms, stitched from English, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, and the local Pomo language, much of it inside jokes about specific residents. For decades it was the valley's everyday speech. It's nearly gone now, with no fluent speakers left, but you can still find traces: the Anderson Valley Historical Society museum in the old red schoolhouse teaches it, a highway marker in town explains it, and the Anderson Valley Brewing Company, whose name is itself Boontling, keeps a word of the week and labels its beer in the dialect. To "harp Boont" was to speak it; a pay phone was a "Bucky Walter." Nowhere else in California made itself a language.
02How to experience it
Boonville is on Highway 128 in Mendocino County, about two and a half hours north. Stop at the historical society museum for the Boontling exhibit (limited days, so check ahead), read the marker in town, and the brewery on the edge of town carries the thread. It pairs naturally with the Mendocino coast or the redwoods over the hill, which is the honest way to justify the drive now that the language itself is mostly a memory.