A geological hotspot deep underground in the northeast corner of California has been sending molten rock to the surface for over half a million years. It’s a reminder that we live out our brief lives on a geologically active planet that counts the passing of time in millennia, not months and years. Medicine Lake volcano, situated […]
Barry Evans
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Table Bluff Cemetery
Seeing today’s sparse scattering of a few homes and farm buildings, Table Bluff’s two cemeteries — one Catholic, one “Other” — might seem like overkill. But the Table Bluff community was once a going concern, a lively stage and wagon stop atop the ridge for which it’s named. Raluaka, its Wiyot name, is a gnarly […]
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The Rosetta Stone
When Napoleon Bonaparte set his sights on clearing the British out of Egypt in 1798, he took with him 160 savants in his 400-ship invasion fleet. These worthies were scientists, artists and historians who, supposedly, would bring the lost civilization of the Egyptian pharaohs to light, thus ensuring Napoleon’s legacy not only as a conqueror, […]
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The Island Yacht Club
Following the “shocking and revolting,” in Bret Harte’s words, massacre at the Wiyot village on the former Indian Island, now Tuluwat, in February of 1860, the few survivors were removed to, or sought refuge at, Fort Humboldt. They were subsequently relocated to the Smith River and Klamath reservations, while German immigrant Robert Gunther, then 29, […]
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The Covered Bridges of Humboldt County
If you’ve flown anywhere in the last few years, you probably — unwittingly — walked through a covered bridge, what airlines call a “jetbridge,” the moveable corridor that links the terminal with the plane. We don’t usually think of a jetbridge as a covered bridge, of course — that’s reserved for those lovely single-lane timber […]
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Dolbeer’s Donkey Engine
“… improvement is the order of the day, and there is no reason why the ox team should not make way for the steam engine as the stage coach has the [railroad] engine.” — Humboldt Times, July 31, 1881 Depending on your point of view, the Dolbeer Steam Donkey was the greatest labor saver in […]
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Samoa Smelter Scam?
A memo from the Environmental Protection Agency dated Aug. 18, 2003, stating that clean-up work at a 3-acre Superfund Site on the Hoopa Reservation was complete, included this curious phrase: “The ore concentrates were trucked off-site for further processing.” It’s curious because, having listed contaminants resulting from two years of work extracting copper and zinc […]
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Mastodons in Greenland
At first blush, the headlines sound like something out of science fiction: “Scientists recreate ancient ecosystem by studying dirt!” But it’s real. The dirt in question, 41 sediment cores taken by Danish paleontologists in 2-million-year-old northern Greenland permafrost in 2005, turned out to be a treasure chest of DNA. They didn’t know that back then […]
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Heroes of the Redwoods, Part 2
Last week, I discussed how the Save the Redwoods League (SRL), founded in 1918, was instrumental in the creation of Humboldt Redwoods State Park, in effect protecting the trees forever. The outcome was never certain until the league persuaded “Junior,” John D. Rockefeller’s only son, to write them checks totaling $2 million (about $40 million […]
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Heroes of the Redwoods, Part 1
Should our lives be judged by the best or the worst of our actions? With most of us, I suppose it’s a bit of a crapshoot, deciding which of our many ups and downs would count as “best” or “worst.” With others, it’s obvious. Take the case of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (1874 – 1960). […]
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Orion and the Pleiades
Winter nights here on Humboldt’s coast often bring startlingly clear skies, complete with those bright winter constellations our ancestors knew, loved, feared and mythologized. Even from the streetlights of Old Town Eureka, with its confusing medley of ionized mercury and sodium vapors and plain vanilla white LEDs, you can still see Orion the Hunter chasing […]
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Survivor of the Brooklyn
“We live hard, we die hard, and we go to hell!” — Jorgen Greve, sole survivor of the Brooklyn wreck, two years later, in conversation with maritime historian Wallace Martin “It looks as though we can make it.” By his own admission, First Officer Jorgen Greve encouraged Capt. F. J. Tufvessen to hold course as […]