The hidden funders of early Eureka Gold eagle coins worth $10, double eagles worth $20 and various paper bills piled so high on the courtroom table that an officer was assigned to guard them. The fortune was the result of another Tithing Day held on Jan. 6, 1909, Eureka’s Daily Humboldt Standard explained, describing how […]
Lynette Mullen
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Red-Light Women, Part I
The hidden funders of early Eureka In the spring of 1876, a bright and determined 17-year-old girl, standing 5 feet 6 inches, with light hair, fair skin and blue eyes, joined an aunt living in Humboldt County. She’d left San Francisco as Catherine Q., and stepped onto the Eureka Wharf as Kittie Warren, marking the […]
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Humboldt’s Grisly History of Illegal Abortions
George Landgren was not a good husband or father. In 1913, he abandoned his wife, Alma, and their two little boys, and headed south. When the local sheriff forced him back to Humboldt County to care for his family, he spent just enough time with them to avoid being charged with desertion — and to […]
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Opium Dens and ‘Morphine Fiends’
When Charles Martin addressed the Judge, his condition invoked the sympathy of everyone in the room. “Standing in the prisoners’ dock, he presented a pitiable sight,” the Humboldt Times described in an edition printed later that day. “Though young in years, he was nevertheless a broken, decrepit being, trembling in every nerve and muscle.” Martin […]
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The Emerald Gang
While Arcata’s William Whaley spent the proceeds of his international smuggling operation with a “lavish hand” on champagne baths and other luxuries in San Francisco, the “thorough scoundrel” and acknowledged “best dressed man on Kearney Street” sent not a penny to his mother in Humboldt, complained the Humboldt Times on Jan. 12, 1894. The widowed […]