Busy week? We get it. Here are some highlights from the cover to get you caught up. (And a few things that didn’t make it into the issue.)
The tiny town of Bridgeville (85 acres, population about 25, located on State Route 36 about an hour east of Fortuna) first rolled across international headlines when it went up for sale on eBay in 2003. The town has changed hands twice since then, and remains for sale. But its history, from the stagecoach era to its presence on the digital frontier, has long been a checkered one. Although countless people have been “bitten by the Bridgeville bug,” owning a town means more than having your own Main Street and zip code. Since the financial bottom dropped out of the region at the end of the timber boom, Bridgeville’s buyers have struggled to maintain the town, and locals who live and gather there have suffered as a result.
1. Bridgeville used to be the only overland route south out of Humboldt County. Before Humboldt Bay opened to ships from San Francisco, the only options to leave the region were north over the rugged Trinity Mountains or east across the Van Duzen. Originally called Robinson’s Ferry after its founder, William Slaughter Robinson, Bridgeville became an important waypoint for stagecoaches. Its original covered bridge was replaced by a stronger concrete arch bridge in 1925, designed by John B. Leonard, the same engineer that designed Fernbridge.
2. At the height of the logging boom, Bridgeville had a livery, restaurant, hotel and general store. It was owned by the Cox family, who had purchased the land in 1912. But by the mid-1960s, it was financially unsustainable to maintain, and in 1973 the Cox heir Laura Pawlus sold it to a family from the Bay Area Long Beach, the Lapples. The town has been almost continuously for sale ever since.
3. Several religious groups have expressed interest in the town. The Pentecostal Faith Challengers, which bought Bridgeville in 1977, eradicated liquor and tobacco products from the town, which eliminated even more revenue. Ownership reverted back to the Lapples when the group’s minister left with his congregants’ money. In the meantime, the town continued to fall into disrepair, with the cabins originally built in the 1940s far outliving their expected use.
4. Although online bidding for the town went up to $1.77 million in 2003, the bidder ultimately backed out, leaving real estate developer Bruce Krall to pick it up for considerably less in 2004. Krall made some improvements to the town with an eye to turning it into a health spa, but he couldn’t make it work and sold it to music producer Daniel LaPaille in 2006 for $1.25 million. Both men died tragic deaths; Krall from a plane crash in 2011 and LaPaille from suicide a few months after buying Bridgeville. LaPaille’s family has been trying to sell the town ever since.
5. Although few people currently live in Bridgeville, many people in neighboring communities use the school and community center and would like to see the town become a place they can gather. Some have developed plans to turn it into a housing co-op, with at least ten people pitching in to buy and develop the land. So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be enough interested parties to make this a reality.
Editor’s Note: The original version of this story mistakenly said that the Lapple family is from the Bay Area, when they are in fact from Long Beach. The Journal regrets the error.
This article appears in Bridgeville.
Linda, it’s nice to see some of your background research online and I would not debate the accuracy of most of it. I love the story about Slaughter Robinson and you really should have included Joshua Drinkwater. He was the last, “official,” white man to be killed in the Pacific Northwest Indian Wars and he is buried in the Bridgeville cemetery. I always wanted to dig him up, resin him and get a quarter a view down at the store. It would have created at least one source of local revenue. Unfortunately, the flood of ’06 totally shuffled the headstones and so no one is sure who is exactly where. (Please note, I am kidding! About the display, not the shuffling.)
I am glad that you corrected the one blatant error, which couldn’t be blamed on a source, the closest that we ever lived to San Francisco was Bridgeville, however the innuendo and inferences in your article, which were obtained from very biased sources, should have been addressed. We both know that there are three sides to every story; their side, my side and the truth. About 650 words of your article refer to my family, either directly or tangentially. In your, “Retraction,” misappropriately titled, “TL;DR Five Things You Need to Know About This Week’s Cover Story,” which, being a bit of a dinosaur, I did not understand; my son explained that it meant, “Too long, didn’t read.”
First, since this information wasn’t in your article, it couldn’t be read, and secondly, I don’t understand why you, as a writer, would bastardize the English language. You have a proficiency at using words to create a scene. The last paragraph in your article was beautiful and evocative. It conjured images, in my mind of this fascinating piece of the earth’s life and a sadness for, what appears to be, the town’s inexorable eventual demise.
However, that great ending paragraph belongs in a book or a feature, not a news story. It is manipulative to a high degree. So, call your piece a feature and it’s cool but, if this is investigative journalism, then not so much so. But, that’s just my view and I’m not your editor. Now, back to those 650 words, I counted 20 words about us in your new post. I don’t really think that it is fair that you ascribed to my family:
1.”We were the saddest thing that ever happened to Bridgeville.”
2: “We tried to take over everything and just let it go downhill.”
3. “Calls to Elizabeth Lapple… went unreturned.”
4. “”Residents called the houses “seamy” and reported being “often without plumbing or sewage.”” This information from a Connecticut newspaper called, “The Day,” an obviously definitive source on all things “Humboldt.”
5. “…the Lapples had burned their bridges with neighboring ranchers.”
6. “The Lapples, it would appear, were the first of Bridgeville’s owners who had enough money to purchase the town, but not nearly enough to maintain it.”
7. “They don’t know what it takes.”
8. “…around this time drugs began washing through the town.”
9. “…she suspected that controlled substances were being sent through the mail.”
10. “”The article in The Day describes the tenants during the Lapple period as people who offended their conservative rancher neighbors because “they did not work…”” This is The Day again and I’m just sure that they flew someone across the country to verify this.
11. We’ll skip this, the first 10 items should prove my point and I don’t feel like writing a book about this.
Just those 10 items deserved far more than 20 words to discuss their intimations. You can hide behind a line such as, “I was just quoting my sources.” You had a very limited number of sources and it is your responsibility to verify those sources. I’m guessing, after reading Facebook, that you are working on writing a book, the journal is your day gig, you are overworked and underpaid and you were probably up against a deadline. The true shame of this is that you had your teeth into a sensational investigative story. It’s a story about corrupt officials, abuse of authority and collusion to commit fraud. Of course that is merely my opinion, but I did keep a journal during the hottest part of the contested times. It has names, dates and deeds. I’m sure many folks will disagree with my observations, recollections and conclusions, but that’s two of those sides to the story and your quest is to provide the third side; The Truth. Again, you really crafted a nice kicker on the piece. You may contact me if you would like to talk.