Cover Story

Salmon River (Mining) District. This district, the largest in Siskiyou County, comprises its entire southwestern corner, and includes the drainage area of the Salmon River and its tributaries. Topographically, it is a tangle of mountain ridges separated by precipitous canyons and river gorges. … The main gold-bearing rock belt of the county crosses through the […]

Whether welcomed or dreaded, the inevitable return to school arrives next week for thousands of elementary, middle and high school students in Humboldt County. As they approach their first day of class, many kindergarteners and students graduating to middle or high school will surely be anxious about fitting in and finding the bathrooms. For older […]

John Ross, a former resident of Arcata, has been the Mexico City correspondent for the San Francisco Bay Guardian for 22 years. He is the author of eight books on Mexican politics and has lectured extensively on Latin America on college campuses from Harvard to UC Berkeley. His book Murdered By Capitalism takes its title […]

For the rodeo cowboy, speed is everything. A couple of weeks ago, a handful of cowboys gathered at a private arena in Redcrest off the Avenue of the Giants, on a patch of land situated between a forest of tall redwoods and the Eel River. They were there to practice for the upcoming Orick rodeo. […]

When the Sequoia Park Zoo’s oldest and most popular animal rejected food and water and struggled to breathe for a second day, his caretakers made an announcement that riveted the Eureka community: Bill the Chimp was dying. The press release declaring that the 61-year-old chimpanzee was “gravely ill” got instant responses from reporters, and when […]

“Ramone’s Bakery.” “Hi, may I talk to your baker?” Jon Norris, the daytime baking production manager at Ramone’s on Harrison in Eureka, gets on the phone. “Do you make thimbleberry pie? Or tarts, or scones, or cookies, or … ?” “I don’t know anybody who uses thimbleberries,” says Norris. “You couldn’t get enough of ’em […]

You might see them busking on the street in Old Town, picking and singing in cafés and clubs, at open mic nights, jamming on a back porch, in a garage or a living room or on some festival stage — musicians of a wide range of ages and caliber living the folk life in their […]

A couple of weeks ago, one of the many small intergovernmental chat shops that hammer out Humboldt County public policy behind the scenes met for the final time. This particular working group had been meeting for over a year. Its goal was to study ways to build a hiking and biking trail between Eureka and […]

If you’re like us, these questions plague you: What is it about karaoke — singing other people’s songs, often badly — that brings tons of people to bars every night all over the country? Who are these people, what exactly do they do and why do they do it? And most importantly, is it physically […]

H umboldt County is a “natural” sort of place. And we’re not just talking forests, rivers, seashores and mountains — when it comes to food, we’re ahead of the curve on the suddenly hip natural trend. We have fruit and vegetable farmers who have been completely organic for decades, dairies and cattle ranchers producing grass-fed […]

How Tyrone Kelley’s roots influence his forest management Photos by Heidi Walters Laramie, Wyo., summer 1985. The bus shuddered along at a crawl and then stopped, brakes exhaling sharply — whshhhh . The driver pulled a lever, folding the door in with a thud, and stumped down the steps to the ground. A passenger, a […]