Then and Now - Roads To Civilization

As the demand for redwood lumber grew, particularly in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, so did the need for overland transportation routes. Railroad companies carved their narrow paths through forests and across rivers. The advent of the automobile gave rise to the need for roads connecting the redwood coast with the markets and transportation hubs of the San Francisco area. Thus, the Redwood Highway, or U.S. 101 was born.

 

Automobile Repair Shop Eureka - 1904

The Eureka area was originally populated by the Wiyot people but with the California Gold Rush, white settlers quickly outnumbered the Wiyot. Many conflicts ensued, leading to the establishment of Fort Humboldt by the U.S. Army. The Army was not able to resolve the conflicts peacefully and the majority of the tribe was massacred during the “Wiyot Massacre” of 1860.The lumber boom followed the gold rush and the Eureka waterfront developed rapidly as a business district.

This 1904 automobile repair shop was located at 5th and J Streets, now the site of the Humboldt County Correctional Facility.

This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: "Images of America: Eureka and Humboldt County"  Clarke Historical Museum 2001 Arcadia Publishing

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Trinidad Lighthouse and the Great White Fleet - 1908

In May of 1908, the 16 battleships of President Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet passed by Trinidad Head on its way from San Francisco to Puget Sound. With its “peacetime white” hulls, its reported mission was to make friendly courtesy calls to many nations across the world, but at a time of rising tensions with Japan, the voyage also signaled the growth of the United States as a global naval power. It gave the Navy the opportunity to better understand the logistical needs of fleet operations far from home.

After the U.S.’s success in the Spanish-American War and its new possession of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, the balance of power in the Pacific had shifted and the fleet’s circumnavigation helped send a message to Tokyo that the U.S. Navy could be deployed anywhere to defend American interests.

A significant source of the tensions with Japan was Japanese concern about the mistreatment of Japanese in California, resulting from 1907’s anti-Japanese riots in San Francisco. Fortunately, the fleet received a warm welcome in Yokohama in October and shortly thereafter, the U.S. and Japan signed the Root-Takihara Agreement that helped define each country’s sphere of influence in the Pacific.

Due to vegetation growth, the modern photo had to be taken at a lower elevation than the original. This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: Photographer: J.A. Meiser; The Boyle Collection, Humboldt State University Library

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Car at Cape Mendocino - ca. 1915

The Mattole Road between Ferndale and Petrolia was built by Chinese workers as a stagecoach road in the late 1800s. This gateway to the Lost Coast of California is a 64-mile, steep and windy, narrow road built on an uplifted sea floor that is seismically very active and prone to landslides. It was built to serve the oil town of Petrolia, the location of the first oil well drilled in California.

Sugarloaf Rock visible just off the Cape is the westernmost point in California and is part of the South Cape Mendocino State Marine Reserve, established in 2012. The Marine Reserve is essential breeding grounds for the Steller sea lion, Western gull, several species of cormorants, black oystercatcher, tufted puffin, and pigeon guillemot.

This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: "Images of America: Eureka and Humboldt County"  Clarke Historical Museum 2001 Arcadia Publishing

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Klamath River Ferry at Requa - 1923

The old Redwood Highway linked Crescent City to Eureka and communities to the South. Before the first Klamath River bridge was built, travelers crossed the river by a ferry about ½ mile up from the river’s mouth, pushed along a secured cable by the river’s current. The first white man to operate a toll ferry on the Klamath at Requa was Morgan G. Tucker in 1876. His business was opposed by the Yurok tribe who had been transporting travelers across the river for a fee in their canoes.The ferry operated until late 1926 when the Douglas Memorial Bridge opened to traffic.

This pair of photos is located within the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: Schoenrock Collection, Humboldt State University Library

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Trinidad Railway Station - ca. 1910

The Trinidad Depot was built in 1907 next to the whaling station. The railway had four miles of track to haul lumber, shakes, fence posts, and pickets to the Trinidad Mill Company. Prior to 1907, the company had built a ½ mile long tramway to the wharf for shipping from their mill on the hill overlooking the bay. It was built on trestles over 60 feet high and powered by mules.

This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: Photographer: A.W. Ericson; Palmquist Collection, Humboldt State University Library

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Honeydew Oil Derrick at Hindley Ranch near Petrolia - ca. 1920s

Up the Mattole Valley about 15 miles from Petrolia, the Hindley Farm was established in 1872, initially raising sheep and cattle. Over the years, reports emerged of oil seeping from the ground in a variety of locations. In 1865, Petrolia’s Union Well, the first producing oil well in California, produced 30 gallons of crude per day. Farmers and ranchers in the area tried their luck with varying degrees of success.

Despite the claim by the Humboldt Times in August 1900 that “There is no doubt but that the richest oil fields in the world are in the Mattole country”, prospecting yielded little to no success. Most wells were abandoned by the early part of the twentieth century.

This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: Laurence and Lisa Hindley Collection, Mattole Valley Historical Society

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Constructing the Redwood Highway - ca. 1922

The early Crescent City-Trinidad Road was built on puncheons (short posts), paved with slabs of redwood. When the winter rains came, the dirt was washed away and water collected under the redwood slabs, “forming veritable geysers as vehicles drove over them.” As automobiles arrived on the scene, the old road proved to be inadequate.

The Redwood Highway was authorized by a bond issue in 1909 but it was the Fall of 1917 before any action took place in Del Norte County. The highway followed the same route as the old stage road, south along the beach, past the Anderson Ranch and Cushing Creek, and up Ragged Ass Hill, clinging to the cliffs for three miles.

Multiple slides over the next decade forced the Highway Commission to relocate a portion of the highway to its current configuration (which still is beset with landslides and is often under repair).In a victory for conservation, the California Highway Commission demanded the highway’s right-of-way throughout Del Norte and Humboldt Counties be unlogged so only those redwoods interfering with construction would be cut down.

This pair of photos is located within the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: Richard A. Childs Collection

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Burning Trolley Car Eureka - 1940

As Eureka modernized its transportation in favor of the automobile, the old streetcar system was no longer financially viable. On February 20, 1940, the last day of regular streetcar service, a trolley car was intentionally burned on Fifth Street between E and F Streets to celebrate the new era.

This pair of photos is located outside the boundaries of Redwood National and State Parks.

 

Left image
Credit: "Images of America: Eureka and Humboldt County"  Clarke Historical Museum 2001 Arcadia Publishing

Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone

 

Return to "Then and Now" homepage