Leggett is where Highway 1 gives up. After hundreds of miles of salt air, fog banks and cliffs that fall straight into the Pacific, the road swings inland through the redwoods of Mendocino County and simply ends at a junction with Highway 101, in a clearing among enormous trees. The village is tiny, a scatter of buildings along the Eel River's south fork, and the nearest towns of any size, Laytonville and Redway, are each almost thirty kilometres away. That tells you most of what you need to know about how empty this corner of California is.
The last stretch into Leggett is the part many riders remember best, and it is not the coast at all. Once Highway 1 leaves the shoreline near Rockport it climbs and twists up a narrow, shaded canyon, tight bends one after another with redwood trunks close enough to touch, patchy asphalt, and a sun that flickers through the canopy so that you keep misjudging the surface. Speeds stay low, and they should. After the long ocean run it feels like entering a different country, cooler, darker and smelling of damp bark and bay laurel.
Leggett itself is a logging story. These hills were cut hard for timber through much of the twentieth century, and the area still lives partly on the memory of it and partly on tourists who stop for the roadside curiosities, among them a drive-through tree that cars can squeeze through for a small fee. It is kitschy, and I found it hard not to enjoy. Behind the novelty are real old-growth groves, some of the tallest living things on earth, and a few minutes walking among them does more for a tired rider than another coffee.
For practical matters, remember that services thin out fast up here. Fuel and a snack are the sensible things to sort out in the village or in the small towns along Highway 101 rather than counting on anything after dark, and if the tank is low, treat the long empty miles on Highway 1 behind you as a lesson learned. Mobile coverage is patchy in the canyon.
If you can choose your day, aim for late morning when the fog has lifted off the coast and the canyon floor has warmed a little. Summer afternoons can be hot inland, while winter brings rain, the odd fallen branch across the road, and wet leaves that make the tight bends slippery. From Leggett the 101 runs north into the heart of the redwood country or south toward Willits and the wine valleys, so you finish here with the choice of two very different ways home.