Top Ten Stories

Twin tragedies on Sept. 27 shook our community to the core. Dorothy Ulrich was murdered  in her home in Hoopa, and later that same morning a hit-and-run driver killed Bayside resident and HSU lecturer Suzie Seemann and severely injured two of her friends as they were jogging. The deaths and injuries raised serious questions about […]

Government efforts to tidy up the messiness of life can run smack into free expression, and at least once this year, free expression won. That came in September, when Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen ruled that big chunks of Arcata’s anti-panhandling law violate the state and federal constitutions. Courts do need to balance […]

  The early news this year looked good for advocates of dam removal on the Klamath River. In January the state released its draft “Secretarial Determination Overview Report,” which made it look likely that the federal government would green-light the landmark Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. Just a month later, however, U.S. Secretary of the Interior […]

It’s not a new idea. Preliminary plans for a rail line connecting Humboldt to points east were discussed in the late 19th century, but a north-south line was built instead. Landslides put that one out of commission, and there has been no rail service to Humboldt since 1999. In its absence, the dream of an […]

Ahh, 2012. The year Eureka finally got its smiley face. But so what? Why include the opening of a Wal-Mart among this year’s top stories? With nearly 9,000 locations worldwide, the world’s largest retailer opening yet another fluorescent-lit shop is certainly not a rare occurrence. Sure. However, no other single issue garnered quite the sustained, […]

  The grumbled buzz about who’s in whose pockets got some new names to speculate about in 2012. Rex Bohn, who won a three-way race in June to succeed retiring Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith, was sworn in early, in August, so that Smith could step down and focus on his health. Estelle Fennell, who […]

  After decades of ham-fisted tough-on-crime legislation — most notably 1994’s three-strikes law, which voters last month resoundingly chose to reform — California’s overcrowded prisons had reached the breaking point. With 173,000 inmates crammed into the system, more than doubling the design capacity and creating nightmarish conditions, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and ordered […]

Most of the time that immense, shifting mass of life-teeming saltwater that collides with our shore brings us joy and sustenance. Other times it makes our hearts beat wildly with fear — or break. On Oct. 30, Manila resident Scott Stephens, 25, was surfing off the North Jetty when a great white shark clamped its […]

  It’s an undeniable fact: Cannabis is big business in Humboldt. Marijuana was on our top 10 story list in 2011, and the year before, and the year before that and farther back into distant news archives. This year some of the biggest news was national, with voters in Colorado and Washington State legalizing recreational […]