2. Location, History and Economy

The City of Eureka is located 84 miles south of Crescent City, 164 miles west of Redding and 271 miles north of San Francisco. It sits on Humboldt Bay, the second-largest bay in the state and the only deep-water port between Coos Bay, Oregon, and San Francisco, California. Diking, drainage, and filling have reduced the historic 27,000 acres of bay and wetlands to about 13,000 acres. Inland from the city are numerous wooded recreational areas including Six Rivers National Forest to the east, Redwood National and State Parks to the north, and Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the south. What is now known as Humboldt County occupies the ancestral homelands of the Wiyot, Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, Chilula, Whilkut, and southern Athabascan peoples. Eureka is within the original territory of the Wiyot. The Wiyot people were displaced from their lands by violent Euro-American colonization. The Wiyot village of Tuluwat was located on what is now known as Indian Island in Humboldt Bay across from Eureka. The island was the site of a horrendous massacre in which settlers attacked the Wiyot community overnight, murdering 200 people. Today many of the Wiyot people live on 88 acres called the Table Bluff Reservation, 16 miles south of Eureka. In 2004 the Eureka City Council formally returned part of Indian Island to the Wiyot Tribe (Source).

The first Euro-American contact in Humboldt Bay was in 1806 when sea otter hunters from the Russian-American Company of Sitka, Alaska made landfall by water. The Gregg-Wood party from the Union Company arrived by land in 1849, founding the neighboring community of Arcata (then Union) (Source). In 1850 the first gold prospectors arrived by ship. Settlers came to the area for the rich natural resources. Eureka was settled in 1856 as an arrival and supply port for the gold mines and timber industry. By the late 1850s, Eureka was home to eight lumber mills (Source). When the gold rush ended many immigrants to the area switched to salmon fishing and farming, and agriculture became one of the area’s more important industries during the second half of the 19th century (Source).

In the 1870s and 80s, the community and businesses developed infrastructure to support the timber industry. Local railroads were built for moving logs to the sawmills in Eureka and docks were built along Eureka’s waterfront to ship redwood and other timber. Eureka became the most successful shipping port in Humboldt Bay (Source). In 1914, the logging railroads were connected with the inland Northwestern Pacific Railroad. Although railroad expansion enabled easier transport to large markets such as San Francisco, it also had profound impacts on the landscape as building the railroad in effect created dike in through the marshlands of Humboldt Bay (Source).

In the 1870s and 80s, the community and businesses developed infrastructure to support the timber industry. Local railroads were built for moving logs to the sawmills in Eureka and docks were built along Eureka’s waterfront to ship redwood and other timber. Eureka became the most successful shipping port in Humboldt Bay (Source). In 1914, the logging railroads were connected with the inland Northwestern Pacific Railroad. Although railroad expansion enabled easier transport to large markets such as San Francisco, it also had profound impacts on the landscape as building the railroad in effect created dike in through the marshlands of Humboldt Bay (Source).

The timber industry was a key employer in the area into the 20th century. Timber even saw a boom after World War II with a new Douglas fir and plywood industry (Source). However, in the 1980s and 1990s, concern over the environmental impact of logging spurred land conservation efforts and the timber industry soon went into decline (Source).

In the 1960s, cannabis cultivation came to the area amidst a national trend towards homesteading. At the time the industry operated illegally but has since been legalized. Since the late 1990s the city has undergone a large revitalization project to revive Eureka’s Old Town and restore many old commercial buildings. The community has also turned toward promoting the long-standing creative arts and culture sector to revitalize the downtown district. The Eureka Street Art Festival was founded in 2016 and each year large-scale murals are added.

The first non-Tribal fishing settlement on Humboldt Bay dates back to 1857. Chinese fishers fishing with beach seines established a dried fish market with San Francisco, sending products by boat. Around the same time, fishers targeted sharks for the liver oil, however, this fishery was short lived, lasting only a decade. Amidst a growing national anti-Chinese sentiment in the late 19th century, Eureka’s white residents evicted the town’s Chinese community in what has come to be called the 1885 Chinese expulsion (Source).

The expansion of the North-Western Pacific Railroad in 1914 was also a boon to fisheries. It gave Humboldt Bay fishers greater access to markets farther away, and it was more reliable than shipping products since ocean conditions could be dangerous and unpredictable. Fishers began shipping larger volumes of seafood products such as locally caught salmon, crab and groundfish (Source). With the shift to motorized vessels in the 1920s, fishers were able to fish outside of Humboldt Bay and the local fishing fleet grew. Around the same time, Highway 101 reached the area, bringing tourism and sport fishers. Over the next 20 years, the commercial trawl fleet shifted from San Francisco to Eureka due to its proximity to fishing grounds and seasonal safe harborage (Source). As the fleet expanded into higher volume groundfish fisheries, the processing industry followed and seafood businesses began opening in Eureka.

The pink shrimp trawl fishery began in California in 1952 in Morro Bay. Soon, however, the fishery moved north to Eureka (Source). As technological advances improved trawl capabilities, pink shrimp and groundfish became even more productive. In 1953, the well-known Eureka Fisheries opened a processing facility in nearby Fields Landing. The company eventually expanded by adding receiving facilities on Humboldt Bay and processing plants in the neighboring fishing communities of Crescent City and Fort Bragg. Commercial fishing activity continued to increase in and around Eureka until 1981 but has declined since for several reasons (Source ).