Fifteen pages into Humboldt County’s Community Health Improvement Plan is a blunt summation: “Humboldt County experiences a higher death rate overall when compared to California, and Humboldt rates for nearly all the leading causes of death are two to three times higher than that of the state.” It’s easy to read the line, look over […]
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Trouble on the Mountain
Horse Mountain is a popular place for outdoor enthusiasts in the Humboldt Bay area. In the winter, the 4,880-foot peak attracts snowboarders, sledders, skiers and snowshoers. In the spring, summer and autumn, it brings birders, wildflower viewers, hikers, photographers and rock-climbers, while history buffs enjoy the remnants of an old quarry where copper was once […]
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‘I Order Him Released’
After living in a kind of legal and custodial purgatory in the Humboldt County jail for months, Steven Dinsmore is once again a free man. Humboldt County Superior Court Judge John Feeney resentenced Dinsmore on Jan. 8 pursuant to a new state law that took effect on the first of the year and ordered Dinsmore, […]
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Through Mark Larson’s Lens
Everyone’s journey in 2023 through our local events, sports, politics, protests, entertainment and the arts was different than mine, but my goal this past year was to again photograph special moments that were particularly memorable. The mission of photojournalism, as Ted Anthony of the Associated Press recently described it, is “to capture moments that represent […]
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New State Laws Aimed to Streamline Home Building Take Effect in 2024
If California wants to build its way out of its long-term housing shortage, plenty of things stand in its way in 2024: high-interest rates, sluggish local approval processes and a persistent shortage of skilled construction workers, among others. But a slew of housing bills from the 2023 legislative session going into effect on Jan. 1 promise to […]
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Top 10 Dick Moves of 2023
Humboldt is short on a great many things — housing, OBGYNs, Portuguese restaurants — but 2023 had no shortage of dick moves. Dick moves are by definition avoidable but are they fixable? Can a selfish, malicious and petty act of destruction be undone? Reversed? Even redeemed? Last December, thieves snuck in under cover of darkness […]
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CPH Included in New Collaborative Earthquake Study Center
It’s a question of when, not if, a major rupture will occur in the Cascadia subduction zone, unleashing a devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami with potentially catastrophic consequences for a large swath of the Pacific coastline. Stretching nearly 600 miles from British Columbia to Cape Mendocino, the megathrust fault has a long history of activity […]
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Top 10 Stories
2023 has been a year of transition in Humboldt County. On the positive side, after generations of efforts, we’re transitioning into a community that undams its rivers, with news of PG&E’s plan to remove its dams from the Eel River following word that the first of four dams had been removed from the Klamath River. […]
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Eureka Schools Agrees to Strange Property Swap
A mystery developer has swooped in to acquire Eureka City School’s long fallow Jacobs Middle School property, scuttling the California Highway Patrol’s plans for the site. Depending on the developer’s plans, the surprise move could also have reverberating impacts on an effort to get Eureka voters to block the city’s plans to convert a number […]
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‘Things Have to Change’
Arron Troy Hockaday leaned over the highway railing to peer into the water below, where the Scott River empties into the Klamath near the Oregon border. Beneath the bridge, dozens of threatened coho salmon rested on their journey back from the Pacific. It was the end of October, and they were waiting for rain to […]
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The Outlier
When Humboldt was selected as one of nine California counties to participate in a prosecutor-led resentencing pilot project, it was cause for celebration in the Public Defender’s Office. Not only would a new state law give the district attorney’s office the authority to ask the court to re-sentence convicts who are either serving exorbitant prison […]
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A Question of Precedence
In the November 2022 election, voters in Arcata faced a seemingly simple question: Should the Earth flag fly at the top of city-owned flagpoles? “It’s time to recognize the primacy of the Earth over nations and states when we fly their symbols on our town square,” Measure M’s ballot text stated in part. “We cannot […]