Home | Crescent City

1. Port-at-a-Glance

The northernmost port in California, Crescent City occupies the ancestral homeland of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and has been an important area for Tribal use of natural resources for thousands of years (and for commercial and recreational use since the mid 19th century). Established in 1852, Crescent City was the region’s main port of entry during the California Gold Rush. Timber and fishing were mainstays of the local economy for decades. The residents of this remote port have dealt with many economic and ecological challenges: two major tsunamis 47 years apart that required rebuilding the harbor, the loss of the timber industry, and declines in the port’s primary fisheries.

Fishing has remained one of Crescent City’s most important sectors both economically and culturally, although the fisheries on which it has been most dependent have shifted over time. Currently, important fisheries for the port include Dungeness crab, groundfish, salmon and pink shrimp. The pink shrimp and groundfish fisheries became more active in the 1960s and 1970s as trawl technologies improved. Pink shrimp remains one of the port’s primary fisheries, though a loss of processors in the 1990s and 2000s has contributed to reduced shrimp landings at the port. Groundfish was once an important year-round fishery for the port, however the West Coast-wide fishery was declared a federal fishery disaster in 2000 following a sharp decline in landings of these species and overcapitalization in the fishery.

Crescent City was among the ports most affected by the implementation of the Federal Pacific Coast Groundfish Buyback Program in 2003 to remove trawl vessels from the fishery. Most of the of port’s groundfish trawlers were sold, which resulted in a significant decline in landings and caused a contraction of the port’s processing sector. From 2003 to 2021, the number of fish business licenses active in Crescent City has decreased by half. The number of commercial fishing licenses associated with the port has decreased from 408 in 2000 to 326 in 2021. Currently, Dungeness crab is the port’s primary fishery by both weight and ex-vessel value. In 2021, landings at Crescent City Harbor accounted for 37% of California’s total Dungeness crab landings, more than any other port in the state.