“There’s a working theory that within a year of residency, most newcomers are infected with a deep and abiding interest in this great place we call Humboldt.” So starts the introduction to Steve Lazar’s The Humboldt Project.
Lazar’s passion is “deltiology,” the study and collecting of postcards. Over the past 15 years, thanks mostly to eBay, Steve has acquired a collection of more than 10,000 Humboldt-themed postcards. A labor of love, he makes these freely available to anyone interested in seeing through the eyes of photographers of around a century ago. Take a look at thehumboldtproject.org/s/home/item for a sample of this huge, fascinating collection.
Not just postcards. Recently, Steve gave me reproductions of several sketches of the Humboldt coast drawn in the spring of 1851 by Joseph Goldsborough Bruff (1804 – 1889), amateur artist and adventurer, professional draftsman and cartographer. Anyone who is familiar with the coast from Trinidad north will immediately know just where he was when he drew these.
Most references to Bruff refer to him as “Captain” Bruff, an informal title he acquired when he led a wagon train party of 66 men to California on the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. In 1849, he formed the Washington City and California Mining Association, in response to James Marshall’s discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill on Jan. 24, 1848, which set off the California Gold Rush. In the spring of 1851, two years after leaving D.C., Bruff, now alone (the expedition having broken up after following Peter Lassen’s emigrant trail into northern California), landed at Trinidad, staying in the area for several weeks. He hiked up to Gold Bluffs Beach (now part of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park), made many sketches along the coastline and took notes on the Yurok village of Tsurai, including making a rudimentary list of Yurok words.
Coincidentally, he was there at the same time the schooner Laura Virginia, captained by Douglass Ottinger and piloted by second officer Hans Buhne (“Booner”), made the first European crossing of a sailing ship into Humboldt Bay. That was April 14, 1851, although the bay had previously been entered in baidarkas — Aleutian kayaks — during the Winship otter-hunting expedition of 1806 (“Finding Humboldt Bay,” July 07, 2022).
Bruff returned to D.C. that summer, where he embarked on a long and esteemed career as an architectural designer for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. (Trivia: In 1887, when he was 83, Bruff was the oldest employee of the U.S. government.) Despite his gear being robbed on return to the capital, the sketches and journals from his trek across the country and of the Northern Californian coast survived. Columbia University Press published them in two volumes in 1949 as Gold Rush Journals & Drawings of J.G. Bruff.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com, planethumboldt.substack.com) tips his hat to Steve Lazar for inspiring this column.
This article appears in Double the Drama.