Willits sits in the Little Lake Valley of inland Mendocino County, about twenty miles north-northwest of the county seat at Ukiah and roughly thirty miles east of the Pacific coast. U.S. Route 101, the Redwood Highway, passes directly through the city, and State Route 20 branches westward here toward Fort Bragg — a junction that has long made Willits the inland gateway to the redwood country. The city's population at the 2020 census was 4,988, with a wider rural population spread across the surrounding valley. The community began under the names Little Lake and later Willitsville, growing as a stop on the stage and rail routes through the valley. Its defining industry was timber. In the 1880s the California Western Railroad was built to haul redwood logs from the forest to the coast, and its passenger and freight service — nicknamed the Skunk Train for its distinctive gasoline-powered railcars — reached Willits in 1911, meeting the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and opening through service to San Francisco. The Union Lumber Company built a depot here where passengers changed trains, and Willits became a rail and lumber town. Today Willits remains a compact working city that functions as the commercial hub for northern Mendocino County's inland valleys. The Skunk Train, which still operates excursions between Willits and the coast, draws visitors alongside the Mendocino County Museum and the Roots of Motive Power logging-equipment collection. Each July the city hosts Frontier Days, California's oldest continuously running rodeo, first held in 1927. With a walkable downtown of historic homes and shops, and ranch land and forest extending in every direction, Willits suits people who want small-town life within easy reach of both the coast and the inland county seat.