On March 6, 2023, Interview with historian Josh Buck at the Clarke Museum in Eureka on the Wigi, Humboldt’s Bay. Natascha’s goal is to educate herself and her community on the Wigi (pronounced with a hard g) in preparation for the Wigi Dome Project. 

Natascha: Okay, Awesome. Thank you, Josh. Cool.

Josh: So, Humboldt Bay. It used to be called Wigi, the Wiyot name for Humboldt Bay. This poster here summarizes the cultural importance of Wigi to the Wiyot people. It was both a place that supplied ample resources to sustain their way of life and a place described as their place of origin. I’m sure you’re familiar with Tuluwat, also known as Gunther Island, also known as Indian Island. This island is infamous for multiple reasons, to the Wiyot Tribe. 

    Tuluwat is a place of ceremonial and spiritual significance. Every year, ideally, there would have been a ceremony in the form of a dance held on the island. And this occurred until the massacre of 1860, during which several residents of Humboldt County who had moved here post-1850 took a couple of boats out to the island. And they used, as they put it, “silent weapons.” They used hatchets and knives and targeted them at a specific time when they knew most men would be away. Men were still on the island, although many of them were elders of the tribe. The estimated number of those killed that day varies between 80 to 250. Tuluwat was not the only location here in Humboldt that was attacked that day. 

     If you take a look at this map right here. Wiyot villages and places of cultural significance surrounded Wigi’s shores. And here on the south spit, where people call the South Jetty now, there were attacks on the Mad River. And these were atrocities that were committed by a few. And I can get much more detailed on the events that led up to that in terms of involvement on the part of both the state and federal governments who took it upon themselves to solve the quote-unquote “Indian problem.” That being said, the Tuluwat Massacre was incredibly disheartening to many local residents. 

    Leading up to the attack, there had been federal troops stationed in Eureka, specifically Fort Humboldt, and around Humboldt County. There were once many military fort installations throughout the county, including Fort Seward, Camp Curtis, and now Cal Poly Humboldt. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the U.S., was stationed at Fort Humboldt for a time prior to the Civil War. He noted in his memoirs that it was not the settlers so much that needed the protection as it was the Native Americans that lived here. With the introduction of settlers post-1850, the way of life for the Wiyot people and all the local tribes was upended. They went from having abundant resources to sustain themselves to having situations where raw materials and staple food groups became challenging to acquire, one example being overfishing.

    One of the staples of their diet, acorns, suddenly became very hard to access because the settlers brought hogs. And, of course, the hogs will eat just about anything, including acorns. So local tribe members were starving and having a challenging time adapting to the new economy that was forced on them. Native Americans of California were treated very similarly to African-Americans here in the country at the time; they were treated as lesser people. They had a word for Native Americans, locally and abroad: “diggers.” And I don’t think you must stretch your mind too far to imagine the connotations here. 

    Genocide was sanctioned at the state and federal level. I will say that for the federal troops here before the Civil War broke out, the objective was not to exterminate Native Americans compared to the Home Guard. Because when you see the Civil War get introduced, all the federal troops here in the county suddenly were pulled east to fight the war. This left an opportunity for a state militia to be formed in the form of a home guard. Now, this home guard had watched the federal troops for years and years, waiting for them to, quote-unquote, do the right thing and either force Native Americans onto particular reservations or exterminate them outright.

    The settler’s perspective was, well, they’re attacking my homestead, and they’re stealing our cattle. Settlers inflated the number of robbed or killed cattle drastically. They would write to the California governor and report false claims in that respect. And you can read primary source material on this that shows that they would claim hundreds and hundreds of cattle would be killed by local natives and that something needed to be done about it. The governor responded in kind by installing more and more troops in the area. I don’t have the name of the fella that was governor at the time, but you can see that even at the state level, it very much, though, could be considered state-sponsored extermination. But I want to give you a bit more backstory on the introduction to settlers in the Humboldt Bay region. I could tell you a bit about the origin stories for Humboldt Bay itself, according to Yurok and Wiyot legend. According to Wiyot legend, there was an individual named Southwest Young Man. Now, Southwest Young Man fell in love with a woman named Butterball, and Butterball frequented Wigi. And one day, he confessed his love for her, and she did not reciprocate. Well, he became jealous and decided to urinate in Wigi. They say that the body of water now known as Humboldt Bay has been salty ever since, implying that at one point, Humboldt Bay may have been a freshwater lagoon rather than a saltwater bay. 

    This is interesting because the Yurok people to the north of us have a similar legend. Their origin story says that there was an individual named Earthquake who had a companion, and he would travel around the county and said, “You know what? I can make the ground sink at any particular spot in the county.” And one of those locations, according to Yurok legend, is Humboldt Bay. It’s also the mouth of the Klamath River, and also, if you were to go north, two rivers further north out of the county, then it would have been there as well. Sümeg (aka Patrick’s Point State Park) is another one of those locations where Earthquake made the land drop significantly within a short period. This is interesting because geological evidence suggests that that did happen. We don’t exactly know when, but it is possible that the amount of erosion that took place, especially from a significant cataclysmic earthquake here on the West Coast, made these locations drop. But it’s just interesting to take the legend and then compare it to the scientific evidence that goes with it.

   This is a painting of Humboldt Bay or Eureka, as it looked in approximately 1854. So very early on. It’s an incredibly rural area, coastal redwoods. This is likely very close to Bucksport; It used to be Buck’s Port, and Fort Humboldt would be in the further reaches. Going back to 1806, so many world-famous explorers sailed by Humboldt Bay. The first European individuals to enter Humboldt Bay from out of the area entered it in about 1806. They were on a ship called the O’cain, a Russian fur trading vessel. 

    They had been making their way south, charting and mapping. Now they decided to land just outside the entrance to Humboldt Bay. And you might be wondering how individuals like Sir Francis Drake and Alexander von Humboldt, how did they manage just to sail right on by, which is one of four significant bays here in California. And the answer is, it’s a very narrow entrance here off our coast. And it’s also very foggy around here, as you know. So, without getting incredibly close to that entrance, there is a lot of potential, A, for accidents to occur because of all the variables involved with sailing that close and not being able to see it.

    So, Trinidad Bay was discovered much sooner, in 1775. And when I say discovered, what I really mean by that is European settlers and individuals traveling along the coast, whether it was the Spanish, the Russians, or later on, U.S. citizens. But the Wiyot people have been in Humboldt for over a thousand years, and plenty of evidence indicates that. So, if you’re interested in exploring more on that topic, I highly recommend a book by Ray Raphael and Freeman House called Two Peoples One Place. It dives into the specifics of Wiyot culture. 

    Following the expedition of the O’cain. And this is a map of that expedition. The second quote, unquote discovery of Humboldt Bay, took place in 1849. The Josiah Gregg party had made their way east to the Trinity mines, and they were tasked with trying to find the tail end of the Trinity River, if not a bay that they had heard about from local Native American guides. And it’s disappointing because Josiah Gregg was the leader of this expedition, and he wrote a diary during this ordeal. But he was the only one who was killed due to that expedition. And we don’t have his diary anymore. As far as I know, the only individual who wrote something was L. K. Wood. And that might be a familiar name, as Gregg and L.K. Wood have place names here in Humboldt that have been named after them.

“They [The Wiyot tribe] said that the body of water between the north and south spit of Humboldt Bay is deeper than the redwoods are tall…” -Josh B.

    This party faced severe hardship, making their way from the east, and they ended up right along the coast. And they found the beach and made their way south. They ran into members of the Wiyot tribe, who took them to what is now the north spit of Humboldt Bay. So right, right here on this map. And they warned them ahead of time. They said that the body of water between the north and south spit of Humboldt Bay is deeper than the redwoods are tall, and they did not take them at their word. They decided to see it for themselves. And they ultimately concluded that they were right. There wasn’t going to be any way for them to really make it across from the. North Spit to the South spit without a vessel, which they did not have access to. They were the first Europeans in Humboldt, what is now Humboldt County. And they had a good experience with local Native Americans. 

    Now, when they decided to leave the area, that was when the trouble started. Getting here must have been an absolute nightmare. For example, you have to search for food and fresh water constantly. You’re in uncharted territory. There were so many variables that made this expedition grueling and unpleasant. There were a lot of disagreements that took place during this particular expedition.

    And when they got south out of Eureka, what is now the Eureka area, and made their way towards the Eel River. The party decided to split up in two; L.K. Woods’s party decided to head for Sonoma County, whereas Gregg’s party decided they would be going towards Sacramento. Now, somewhere along the way, Gregg, we don’t know exactly what happened. He may have angered the people he was with and very well may have been killed for some decisions he had made. But what is more likely is that he just starved. He was on his horse and fell from it and probably sustained an injury from falling off that horse and ultimately died as a result.

     L.K. Wood didn’t fare too much better. He did not lose his life. But on that way down, they ran into the California grizzly bears, which were very big here in the county back then. And at one point, he had two grizzly bears going after him. One of them had his jaws down on his head. The other one had his feet. So, he’s getting pulled and strained by these two massive grizzlies. And if you’re interested in reading more about that expedition, I recommend The Discovery of Humboldt Bay by L.K. Wood. It’s a primary source that does much better justice to the story than I am currently.

    With this discovery, word gets out that there is this bay. Right around this same time, the California gold rush is kicking off. People want to go east to the Trinities and hear, ‘Hey, hold on a second. We don’t have to go by land up through the middle of California to get here. We can sail into Humboldt Bay and then push east towards the Trinity mines. It’s much easier.’ So someone must find this bay, ideally via sea, because if you sail north from San Francisco, you need a port. 

    Sure enough, Captain Henry Buhne and the Laura Virginia in April the following year, 1850 was the first U.S. vessel to enter Humboldt Bay. Henry Buhne was a prominent individual here in the county. He would go on to have a series of general stores. And if you look on top of the triplet case over there, we have one of the signs belonging to one of his many businesses; he’s another individual with a whole lot of property in the county named after him. 

     I also recommend this movie, which the Humboldt County Historical Society made. It’s available on YouTube but called The Disasters of Humboldt Bay. They put together a distinguished panel of experts who will give you specific information on Humboldt Bay’s history, especially from the Wiyot perspective, as several individuals on the panel are all Wiyot. Post-expedition Humboldt becomes a landing zone for people hoping to strike it rich. 

    The first real place name city in Humboldt is Humboldt City, which is long gone. Shortly after that, Union springs up. Union stuck around much longer than Humboldt City, but it became Arcata. And in 1854, we saw the development of a long wharf that jutted out into what is now Arcata Bay. And if you go to the marsh, you can see the pilings that used to jet way, way out into the bay was well over it was like 11,000 ft into the bay. And why did they do that? Well, they did that because as you approach the bay shore, the bay is very shallow and becomes a tidal mudflat. 

     Humboldt Bay is treacherous. But even when you enter it, it’s not ideal for landing craft. It just hasn’t been forever. Now, the only way to get goods from the ships was to build this incredibly long wharf and then have boats anchor off the coast here within Arcata Bay. And then, they developed the very first railroad in California, the Union Plank Walk and Rail Track Company.

    Now, this wasn’t a railroad in the conventional sense. A wooden rail system ran from the tail end of that wharf right into the community of Union. And this is how the settlement goes from very small to very big. You can suddenly land everything you need that you can’t get from out of the area in this spot. So, Union grows exponentially, and you see the development of Arcata. Then you see Eureka get developed. Eureka becomes the true county seat, and things just explode from there. 

    People came for gold. They thought they would strike it rich when it came to making their way east and finding an immense amount of gold that would line their pockets for the rest of their lives. What people ultimately stayed for, though, was the redwood gold that they found. The vast swaths of redwood trees that were thousands and thousands of years old proved to be a commodity that people wanted. Now, the local tribes of our area were not only the original stewards but also the original… loggers of the area, but they were much more ethical, I think is the right word I’m looking for. 

    When it came to sourcing the material needed to make things like Redwood Canoes, they would pick a tree that was dying because the tribes here recognized that everything around us has a spirit and that they would do their best to be able to sustain the earth rather than plunder it for fortune and for building up and amassing these massive cities that we would see being built.

    The timber stands in Humboldt became even more popular when the catastrophic earthquake of 1906 occurred in San Francisco. That cataclysmic event tore the city asunder and resulted in a great blaze that moved throughout the city, reducing much of it to ash. And we see this sudden demand for redwood timber skyrocket because they need to rebuild San Francisco now. So, the redwoods of Humboldt County end up rebuilding San Francisco, and every single one of those loads before 1914 will be going out via a sailing ship, much like the ones you see here. Now, many of these vessels were built in the county. There were a few shipyards. There was Bendixsen. There was Rolf’s, and many more. All of these were made using Redwood Lumber. What better way to build a ship than having the material you need here? These ships are going to be transporting lumber to San Francisco all over the world. And Redwood becomes the go-to commodity of Humboldt County. And it lasted that way. And to this day, we still have a significant lumber mill.

    We have Schmidbauer Lumber. We have Almquist Lumber. But the number of lumber mills that there used to be by the 1940s, you see hundreds and hundreds of logging operations in the county. And now we’re moving into the territory of less than a dozen. As you move closer to the present and that’s not due to monopolization so much as it is changes in demand. When we are introduced to compete with the Canadian market and the East Coast, we see demand shift to those resource areas rather than here. But it’s also environmental regulation that takes place in California. 

     There’s always been a recognition that redwood trees stand out, and you see these pioneer groups like Save the Redwoods League that championed them and made it a primary effort to save them, even in the early 1900s. So, while those groups exist, we don’t see a true stoppage of this massive lumber industry here in the county until much later. We do see groves get preserved. But as far as the grander scheme of the county, it’s minimal. Over 90% of the old growth here in the county was ultimately cut. And we have beautiful examples of pristine thousand-year-old or older redwoods in the county. But to compare it to what Humboldt used to look like is shocking. If you drive through the streets of Eureka and on any given spot, you can occasionally see these massive redwood stumps sitting right in somebody’s front yard.

   And those are remnants of a time long gone where Eureka has changed significantly since 1850. Ships that are coming in and out of Humboldt Bay they’re facing a variety of issues. Of course, as I mentioned, the fog is the big one. The entrance to Humboldt Bay is less than half a mile wide. By contrast, the Golden Gate Bridge is the narrowest point on San Francisco Bay. So, you can imagine which one you would instead navigate through. 

    If you go out to the north and south jetty, as illustrated in this photo, you can easily spot the other side if you’re standing there on either side. Not only is it narrow, the bay itself is only dozens of feet deep, whereas the entrance to San Francisco Bay is hundreds. Humboldt Bar, just off the coast, just outside the mouth of Humboldt Bay, is incredibly treacherous. If you don’t time it right, two tidal changes occur daily on Humboldt Bay. And if you don’t time that right, especially back then, you’re going to have issues. If you’re caught up in a squall or if you’re caught up in a significant storm, it’s going to be a horrible time for those on the ship. If we move over here, this is an excellent representation of how deadly trying to get in and out of the bay was. Dozens of shipwrecks occurred both north and south of Humboldt Bay. But if you look at that, you can see that dozens of shipwrecks take place at Humboldt Bar. It got to the point where locals are demanding that some kind of federal or state assistance arrives here on the bay to ensure that in the event of a catastrophic shipwreck, we have a team of people ready to go out and try and save them. And that leads to the creation of the lifesaving station here in the county. This was built right on the Samoa Peninsula in 1878.

    Now, the federal government sponsored this project, and they supported the creation of the lifesaving station here and along the Pacific Northwest coast. They chose particular locations, though. They had the data available to them to indicate, okay, if we’re going to invest this money, we want to make sure that it’s somewhere where there are consistent wrecks, and we can do something to address them. And that’s precisely what they did. They identified Humboldt Bar as a severe problem. So, they built this station, and at first, it was all volunteers, believe it or not, and it only could handle about six volunteers in The Keeper at the time. They were all referred to as Surfmen, and their whole responsibility was to stand by and wait for an emergency.

   And that they did. And they had plenty of opportunity to be able to show what they could do as far as rescue efforts go. It wouldn’t be until 1915 that the Coast Guard is going to be developed, and they are the official federal program that took over responsibility from the Surfmen. It wouldn’t be until much later that we would get the facility you can now go to on the Samoa Peninsula. There is the Humboldt-based station now, and I’m hoping that in a month or so, we’re going to have a field trip out there so people can have the opportunity to see the inside of it. But yes, this new facility could house many more people. And now you have paid individuals working here in the county, which is excellent. And ever since then, the Coast Guard Sector of Humboldt Bay has developed further and further. And now not only do they have the ability to save individuals with vessels like the Coast Guard cutters, but they’ve also got helicopters now, which I’m sure you see routinely flying around Humboldt, and that’s the United States Coast Guard Sector Humboldt Bay that’s responsible, specifically the air station located in Mckinleyville. In addition to the lifesaving station and the Coast Guard station, you also see the development of lighthouses here in the county, a favorite subject for many folks. 

    If you go to the Samoa Peninsula, very close to Bunker Road, you will find the footprint of Humboldt County’s oldest lighthouse. It’s long gone. It’s nothing more than brick in the sand at this point. But it is the first lighthouse built here in the county to try and address all of these variables these incoming and outgoing ships had to face. That particular White House was built in 1855. And there’s a photo of it there on the left in 1912. Within a few years of building that facility, they figured out that it would be too low during really heavy fog for the beacon to benefit incoming ships. So, they start looking for a place with a higher elevation. And that will manifest itself as a table Bluff lighthouse, which was built in. I will get a date for you on when that was created. It was at least about two, not quite two decades afterward, but it was the second of ultimately five that would be built. As time passed, you would see more and more White House activity. You’ll see one in Trinidad, pop up, one at Cape Mendocino, and one at Punta Gorda near Shelter Cove, right on the Mattole River, or rather just south of it. You can still visit a lot of these. The only one truly gone is the Humboldt Harbor Light House in Samoa. 

    You can see the Table Bluff Lighthouse. It will be on Woodley Island, right next to the restaurant there. And all the ships that dock here just off the shore in Eureka. You can also see the Punta Gorda Lighthouse. It is still sitting out there, although all the outbuildings surrounding it are gone. It makes for a great hike, especially along the Lost Coast trail. The Trinidad Head Lighthouse is the only one still active and in its original spot. The Cape Mendocino Lighthouse was picked up and moved, just like the one at Table Bluff, and it wound up just inland on Shelter Cove’s coastline. So, if you go to Shelter Cove and right down to the beach, you can see this lighthouse now moved there. It’s not in operation, but it’s still cool to see. 

    Suppose you want to see the original frontal lens that used to be in Humboldt Harbor and subsequently transferred to Table Bluff Lighthouse. In that case, you can see that at the Maritime Museum in Samoa. 

    The Clarke is a living museum. This will only be on display for about four months. But the Maritime Museum in Samoa has an outstanding collection. They have pieces of ships and shipwreck memorabilia that we will never have, and they have a fantastic amount of photographs about maritime history, especially the Coast Guard. 

    This case highlights the variation in the types of ships that frequented Humboldt Bay, especially the early ones. All of these range in date and time. But if you move here, you can see these examples of these tall three-masted ships that frequented Humboldt Bay the most in the early days. Then you’re going to see a transition to steam schooners, which became more popular for local tugboat use and getting people from point A to point B. Over here, these are all examples of the shipwrecks that have occurred both on Humboldt Bay and near. For example, there’s a photograph of the Corona, one of the more infamous shipwrecks in the county. She wrecked just off of Humboldt Bar in 1907. And if you go to the North jetty these days, you can still see the remains of her mast sticking out of the sand. She’s moved further and further inland, just with repeated waves pushing her closer and closer to shore. But I like that shipwreck because it’s one you can still see in our area.

   The most infamous shipwrecks that occurred here in Humboldt were in 1916 and 1917, respectively. The United States was dragged into WWI and leading up to that, we had a lot of tension building. There were three submarines, state-of-the-art vessels that were patrolling the California coast. They had been tasked with entering every one of the ports as a military exercise. Now, the H3 Submarine was the third sub of that group, and it was the last one to try and navigate its way into Humboldt Bay. So, it had a nickname amongst its crew, The Hoodoo, because she had had many problems over her use. 

    The H3 sub mistook a light off the coast for the lighthouse, ran aground just off the coast of Samoa, and got incredibly stuck. And the story of trying to get those men off of a sub while the surf constantly came in and out was a significant ordeal. So, finally, local contractors told the federal government…we will get your submarine unstuck. We will drag it up on the shore, which will only cost you $18,000. They looked at that and said, ‘That’s a nice proposal. But really, I think we’ll just do it our way.’ So, what did they do?

    Well, there was a cruiser named the USS Milwaukee, which was built in 1906. An enormous vessel, State of the Art, will cost $4 million to make in 1906. And adjusted for inflation, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, they brought the Milwaukee up to try and latch on to the sub and drag her back out. And when they did that, they brought the Milwaukee up and one other naval ship. And the name I don’t have on me at the moment. I can get that, though. The way it was set up, the sub is on the shore. The Milwaukee is just off the coast with a line running to the Milwaukee, and then behind the Milwaukee, there was the second naval ship tied off to the Milwaukee, and then a tugboat tied off to the Milwaukee. 

     Well, once they got here, they were sitting there resting off the coast, and suddenly, the storm hit, and those two ships had to let go of Milwaukee. And in the process, Milwaukee ran aground. So now, not only do you have the submarine stuck. You’ve got this massive cruiser also stuck. So what to do about that? Well, it was going to be more complex than local contractors saying we can just drag this up on the beach-no way. 

    Ultimately, what ended up happening was Mercer Fraser, a local company that’s been around since 1870, was given the contract to haul the sub out of the water, just like they had initially planned to do. Meanwhile, the Milwaukee had to be stripped of all its vital components and reduced to very little. It was a complete and utter loss, though all of her arms and armament ended up going to Mare Island here in California, where they were repurposed. But the teak decking, the very top layer on the ship, was stripped. 

     And then a lot of it was either given or sold to local high schools for the woodshop kids to work on. And a piece of that teak decking is on display right now. I can’t tell you how much of this is still out there at this point, but the historical society somehow got ahold of pieces of it and ended up selling it as a benefit for the historical society in 2012. But these are all photos that highlight the timeline of that event. Moving through with the H3 sub washing up on shore shortly after that, the Milwaukee in 1917, early 1917. They had to build a whole new extension on our local railroad just to be able to reach the Milwaukee. And they had to build on the beach, which I can’t imagine was easy. Some daring individual climbed to the top of the mast here and snapped this incredible photo of the Milwaukee kind of keeled over. 

    These are two spectacular pieces. The one on the left is a bulkhead clock from the wrecked Milwaukee. A fisherman swam out to the ship, recovered this clock, and brought it back. And I don’t know the story behind the ceramic mug, but it was also recovered along with that lantern right there. So, there are pieces of this that still definitely exist. If you go out to Samoa, though, and look for a big rock about halfway to Bunker Road just on the side of the road, that is the memorial to the loss of the Milwaukee. No one died during this event, but it was an incredible loss in terms of monetary value. 

    Many people in the newspaper painted Humboldt County as at fault for what happened with the Milwaukee, even though it was not a Humboldt Bay that it wrecked in. It wrecked off the coast of Humboldt Bay, just very close to its entrance. I don’t know if people were troubled with the county and the loss of this ship during a time of war. But Humboldt played its part in regaining its good standing with the public. 

    The shipbuilding that had become a vital feature of the county and especially of the bay suddenly changed gears, and they wanted to develop ships that could carry goods and people for the war effort. This is the very last time you see wooden warships being built, which were made right here in Humboldt. These are all photos of the different types of ships made at Rolfe’s shipyard and Hammond Lumber Company’s shipyard. One of these, in particular, the Conqueror, was huge.

    Unfortunately and fortunately, depending on how you look at it, these vessels were created late in the war. It reached the point where the West Coast turned out a boat like this about once a day. It was getting impressive. They were cranking them out like crazy. And then, the war ended in 1918. And now you have all of these wooden vessels that the federal government ordered, and now they have no war to participate in. So, many of them wound up going south to kind of a ship graveyard. And the outlines of many of these vessels can still be seen as a tourist attraction in the southern United States. But it’s just kind of crazy to think that all of this redwood timber and these resources were ultimately kind of for nothing. And it was dubbed, very fittingly, a fleet to be forgotten in the grand scheme of things.

    WWII s a similar event in that shipbuilding was still a prominent feature here in Humboldt. The Chicago Bridge and Iron Works was an out-of-area company, of course. Still, they selected Humboldt because it was an ideal location for building these massive dry docks and these incredibly tall floating cranes that would be used for the war. Now, why did they pick Humboldt Bay over San Francisco Bay? At the time, Humboldt was the only bay in California that wasn’t obstructed by a massive bridge. So, you could build these vessels as tall as you wanted, but that way, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to plow right into a bridge. So, they did. 

    It was the most significant commercial project ever to take place here in the county by a particular company. This is an aerial view of that operation. Both men and women worked for this company. And if you were to go down near Costco, that’s approximately where all this occurred. There’s very little sign to indicate that this was ever here. There’s no memorial or recognition of the services of the men and women who did this. But it is still a vital feature of the country’s history. If you’re interested in more information, I recommend Jack Burrell’s senior thesis on when WWII came to the county. 

   There’s also a guy named Ray Olson who made an incredible YouTube video about the shipbuilding and the bunkers located on the North jetty. Now, you can still go to these bunkers if you want to. There are under 15 of them out there. But they were all built to store ammunition. There was a lot of concern over a Japanese invasion of the US mainland, even though it never occurred. People were still gearing up and becoming ready for it. 

    The closest thing that ever happened to that was to the north of us in Brookings, where a submarine, the I-25, had a plane that could have its wings folded down into the inside of the submarine and be launched with a slingshot. Well, the I-25 launched this little plane carrying a pilot named Fujita. And Fujita’s objective was to fly over the coast in Brookings, Oregon, and drop incendiary bombs to try and start a massive forest fire. They didn’t count on the fact that the Pacific Northwest is so heavy with fog and dew. So, the bombs that they dropped had minimal impact. 

    You can still go where the bombs fell on the Brookings Bomb Site trail. Still, it is one of the lesser-known stories of the Second World War that the US mainland was attacked. Still, we never actually saw a full-on invasion anywhere along California’s coast or the Pacific Northwest mainland. But there are certainly remnants of an imminent attack. There were blackouts throughout the county where everyone was ordered to kill their lights at night. Humboldt State was painted camouflage to blend in with the trees around it. A blimp base in Samoa was there to help patrol the waters off the coast and try and spot Japanese submarines and other vessels. 

    And, of course, the Japanese did target, especially fuel tankers, off the coast. This is a photo of the Emidio, the first Pacific Coast vessel torpedoed during the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And this came after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Very shortly after that, on December 20th, 1941. If you want to see the remains of the Emidio, all you have to do is go to Crescent City. And in the Harbor district, they have the very front, most of the Emidio. 

   This case is all about the whaling industry here in Humboldt County. Now whaling is a practice in the United States that dates back much further, but whaling took off in the early 1940s here in Humboldt, especially during the war. There were a lot of uses for whale oil and whale meat, especially when it came to rationing during the Second World War. Sources I’ve read indicated that with the rationing of specific goods like meat, they suddenly started turning to alternatives. And what are you going to do? Well, we’re going to hunt some whales.

    This whole case is filled with remnants of that era here in Humboldt, which few people are proud of. But it happened. There were several facilities in the county for whaling, the most prominent of which was the Fields landing whaling station just south of Eureka. This is an overhead shot of it, and this series of photos just illustrates the process of capturing and hunting these whales.

    There were four vessels post-World War two that were well-known in this area. The Donna Mae, the Alan Cody, and the other two names escaped me, but they were all ex-World War II freighters. They had been converted into whaling ships, and each vessel had a massive gun on the bow that would be used for hunting. From what I’ve been told, these ships hunted in pairs. One of them would have the harpoon, and the other would have a compressor on board because these whales are darn near as giant as the vessels going after them. So how do you get them back? Well, you fire that harpoon, drag it closer to the ship, and pump oxygen into it to keep it afloat. And that’s how you get it back to the processing center. And that’s what these photos are. Drag the whale up, and process it.

    And, boy, let me tell you, the smell was just absolutely horrific. People in Fields Landing the neighbors of this facility complained so much because it just reeked out there. And not only do you have a facility like this in field landing, but you also have one in Trinidad. Hauling in whales was a natural spectacle. Humboldt never really had a Disneyland-type attraction aside from the redwood trees, but it drew big crowds when a whale came ashore, whether they were tourists or locals. And that’s been captured in a series of photographs that people took. I particularly like this one, which shows this little girl standing in the mouth of this massive whale they brought ashore in the early 1940s. And all of these photos have been colorized as well.

    This is Trinidad and their whaling operation. And then here, in the case, we have examples of Flensing knives. Processing the whale was a dirty business. You needed some particular tools for the job. And a variety can be seen on display here at the Clarke. I’ve got an example of a whale vertebrae.

   This particular harpoon was not used here locally. But it is an excellent example of the fight that can ensue. When you hit a whale with something like this, each one of these harpoons had an explosive tip. So, when it made an impact, ideally, it would have killed it instantly. But that only sometimes happens. And these whales are mighty.

So strong that it can bend thick pieces of metal like this harpoon toward them.

    The last whale to be hunted here in the United States was near San Francisco Bay, one of those ex-WWII vessels converted into Whaling ships, which went south out of the area. When the whaling industry in Humboldt ended in the 1950s in San Francisco Bay, whaling continued, and it wasn’t until ’71 that the very last whale to be killed by a company was spotted and fired upon with that harpoon right there. So it is the very last harpoon to be used in a successful whale hunt in the United States. And it’s on loan from the collection of Larry Swingseth. 

    But that is more or less through the whaling industry. And here are a few of those vessels. I was referring to the Winona as the Dennis Gail and the Winona, and there was the Donna Mae and the Alan Cody. Those were the four primary vessels. 

    Of course, fishing here in the county since time immemorial for the local tribes has been a cornerstone practice for sustaining their way of life. And that is, of course, continued with the introduction of European settlers in the area. The problem lies within the fallout from the timber industry and overharvesting, leading to practices like clearcutting and erosion, which actively fill up creeks and rivers. And lead to a decline in population and just overfishing as a practice. And there’s an old Native American legend that says that at one point on the Eel River, you could walk from bank to bank on the backs of the salmon. This is because there were so many fish. But now you’re fortunate to see the Salmon in the Eel River. You can still see them in the Klamath River, but even there, the runs are different from what they used to be.

    There were several canneries here in Eureka. Lazio’s was a massive cornerstone industry here in Eureka. They had a restaurant and a cannery that processed fish and shipped it out. And a lot of this stuff, just like the redwood lumber industry, is continued, but not nearly to the point it once was. In all cases, whether it was regulation or overfishing over cultivating trees, all that stopped for one reason or another. And these are just all examples of scenes on Humboldt Bay. All the many shifts that are now still there. This is these are much earlier shots, though. I’m trying to think if there’s anything I still need to include in particular. 

    There are many different ways to catch fish, especially in areas like Trinidad Bay and the beaches there. Smelt fishing is vast and hugely important, especially for the Yurok tribe. This is an example of a surf net that was used. Unfortunately, not many photographs could be considered prime examples of not staged material when people with photos eventually did come to be ethnographers for the area. But there are two that we have here on display. 

     This same photographer would stage a lot of things. The guy named Edward Curtis and his images are widely available online. Still, he’s gotten, I guess, a bit of a bad rap because he staged a lot of the material that he otherwise absolutely did photograph local Native Americans. Still, he would ask them to do things that only sometimes represent daily life. But this means a better example of the work that he carried out because it is much more in line with what actual practice would look like in action. And both of those were taken very close to Trinidad.

Let’s see. Is there anything else I should cover?

Are there any particular questions you have for me on these topics? 

Natascha: Yeah. Thank you so much for educating me so much, and I do have a few questions. 

Josh: Yes. 

Natascha: Um, I wanted to know when was the bay the most populated?

Josh: I would say probably these days because it depends on what time period you’re looking at. If we’re looking at pre-contact, Wiyot villages surrounded the entire bay. Still, the Wiyot tribe was never particularly massive compared to Humboldt’s current population. Humboldt’s always had a relatively small population, especially Eureka. If you walk around, many of the buildings first established here in Eureka are still everywhere. And that is due, in significant part, to the fact that our population has only grown so much over the years. So, these days, the amount of traffic you see on Humboldt Bay is probably darn near an all-time high. You could make a case that fewer ships are coming to transport goods and lumber out of the area. But that’s an interesting question. It depends on what lens you’re looking through. If you’re looking at it from a commercial perspective, it indeed has declined. But we’ve also recuperated that with the introduction of cruise ships coming into the area—or just tourists in general who ride the Madaket or other commercial vessels. 

Natascha: And Boy, do you see any effects on the bay with the increase in population?

Josh: I would think so, yes. Over the years, there’s been a lot of effort to focus on the environmental impacts of maritime activity here on the Bay. There are a lot of natural events that make Humboldt Bay challenging to access. For example, the Eel River has the highest level of sediment turbidity here in the United States for a river of its size, which means that the erosion on either side feeds into the river. Then the river carries it right to the mouth of Humboldt Bay, leading to the development of that sandbar offshore. So, you must constantly dredge all that to keep up with it. And that one impact is that dredging has been a long-standing practice on the bay to keep ships coming in and out. I know very little about the history of toxins on the bay. Still, with all the lumber mill activity, whether Hammond Lumber, Simpson, Georgia-Pacific, or Louisiana-Pacific, there was a lot of runoff from those facilities. And I wouldn’t necessarily quote me on that one, but a lot of industry has especially come and gone on the Samoa Peninsula. And when it comes to fishing, I need the stats to indicate that the fish population has declined severely over the years. But the main one that has dropped is the salmon population. That’s a vital example of a significant change in take your fish that has just declined in people over the years, whether because of filling in creeks or leading to worsening conditions n rivers, or overfishing as a practice.

Natascha: You were talking about Europeans coming by boat, and I know that many otters were affected by that. Do you think that there was a change in the ecosystem when the otters were fished for their skins?

Josh: I don’t know much about that through this specific lens of the otter population, but I wouldn’t doubt it either. A lot of change has occurred, whether you look at it from the perspective of the grizzly bear here in Humboldt County or the California condor. One is wiped out, and the other one just got reintroduced. The Yurok tribe recently released 2 to 4 condors. We have an example of a condor at the end named Charlie. And he represents the last of his kind here in the county, aside from those just released. We believe he was found in about 1899. So, with the introduction of poison scavenger birds like Charlie would ingest, it reduce their population significantly. So, yes, the animal population here on the bay has changed considerably since 1850—no doubt about that.

Natascha: What would it be if you could make an orison for the Humboldt Bay?

Josh: Make a what now?

Natascha: A wish.

Josh; Oh, a wish for the bay. (Pause) I would like sustainable commerce and way of life to be a common practice again. I think that local tribes were stewards of this land, and we’re learning a lot from them. We’re listening and trying to replicate practices. Things like prescribed burns are returning that will lead to the management of these areas. And there’s a middle ground to be had. But I hope that the life we’ve seen over the years on the bay will return, and the ecosystem will continue to flourish. You see these beautiful herons that grace the shores of Humboldt Bay, blue herons, and all these different birds at the marsh in Arcata. It’s just wonderful to see wildlife returning while still finding enough economic enterprise to sustain the capability of managing these areas to a point where, you know, human activity still takes, if you want to say, a front seat but a coexisting seat with the ecosystems of our area.

Natascha: Thank you so much, Josh. I appreciate your time.

Josh: Happy to do it. Okay.