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Field Notes

Field Notes / By Barry Evans

The Covered Bridges of Humboldt County

(March 30, 2023) 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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Dolbeer's Donkey Engine

(March 16, 2023) "... 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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Samoa Smelter Scam?

(March 2, 2023) 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:...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Mastodons in Greenland

(February 16, 2023) 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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Heroes of the Redwoods, Part 2

(February 2, 2023) 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....

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Heroes of the Redwoods, Part 1

(January 26, 2023) 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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Orion and the Pleiades

(January 12, 2023) 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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Survivor of the Brooklyn

(December 29, 2022) "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...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Dinosaurs Died, Mammals Thrived

(December 15, 2022) Ten minutes before a huge space rock — as wide as Humboldt Bay and half as long — barreled through Earth's atmosphere 66 million years ago, ending the Mesozoic...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Eureka's Street Railways

(December 1, 2022) The good old days in Eureka, I've heard, were the 1920s and 1930s, when a family could enjoy a Sunday excursion by streetcar from Old Town to Sequoia Park....

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

One Year, Five Emperors

(November 17, 2022) The current state of the nation is as bad as I've seen it in my lifetime. Threats to democracy abound, from the Capitol riot (aka "legitimate political discourse," according to...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Trouble on the Line: The Reality Part 2

(November 3, 2022) "We know now that the railroad should have gone east to Red Bluff." Dan Hauser, former NCRA executive director, 2022 Last week, we looked at the 1907 decision to route...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Trouble on the Line: The Decision – Part 1

(October 27, 2022) "Only men of the Eel River Line would railroad here: the ordinary railroad man would take one look, collect his pay and disappear to flatland railroading to seek a less...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

The Tuluwat Island Massacre in its Time

(October 6, 2022) Archeologists have determined that Wiyot people occupied Indian Island for at least 1,000 years — possibly much longer — including the village of Tuluwat, one of the several locations where...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

William Carson and his Mansion

(September 22, 2022) "[The Carson Mansion] will stand as a monument to a life of unexampled energy and honest integrity. — Humboldt Gazette, April 25, 1887. It's hard to find anyone who had...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Hesiod: Farmer, Poet, Misogynist

(September 8, 2022) "[Hesiod's] personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of 'aristocratic withdrawal' typical of a rhapsode but is instead argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of...

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