Logging Railroads of Humboldt and Mendocino Counties

Logging Railroads of Humboldt and Mendocino Counties
Author: Katy M. Tahja
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0738596213

Locomotive steam whistles echo no more in the forests of the north California coast. A century ago, Humboldt and Mendocino Counties had more than 40 railroads bringing logs out of the forest to mills at the water's edge. Only one single railroad ever connected to the outside world, and it too is gone. One railroad survives as the Skunk Train in Mendocino County, and it carries tourists today instead of lumber. Redwood and tan oak bark were the two products moved by rail, and very little else was hauled other than lumberjacks and an occasional picnic excursion for loggers' families. Economic depressions and the advent of trucking saw railroads vanish like a puff of steam from the landscape.

Logging the Redwoods

Logging the Redwoods
Author: Lynwood Carranco
Publisher: Caxton Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 1975
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9780870043734

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press The giant redwood trees are one of California’s best known attractions. Thousands of tourists visit the Northern California groves each year. The story of the California redwood lumber industry also tells the stories of the men, the trains, and the land. This book is dedicated to the pioneer lumbermen who succeeded in launching careers as mill men by overcoming the tremendous obstacle of moving the giant redwoods from the woods to the mill, by inventing equipment strong enough to handle the gigantic logs, and by finding suitable markets for their lumber throughout the Pacific area; and to Augustus William Ericson and the other early photographers who preserved the early history of logging in pictures.

Northwestern Pacific Railroad

Northwestern Pacific Railroad
Author: Susan J. P. O'Hara
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2013-11-18
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1439644314

The year 2014 marks the centennial of the completion of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP), celebrated by driving a golden spike at Cain Rock in October 1914. This achievement was the culmination of a massive, six-year engineering effort to connect rail lines ending at Willits with the early lumber company railroads of the Humboldt Bay region. When it was completed, the NWP linked Eureka with San Francisco by rail, a milestone in the history of Humboldt and Northern Mendocino Counties. This book examines the impact of the NWP on Northwestern California. Although no longer operational, the railroad today symbolizes the ongoing struggle to connect this isolated region with the wider world.

Fort Bragg

Fort Bragg
Author: Sylvia E. Bartley
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467130850

In 1857, Fort Bragg was an Army post on the Mendocino Indian Reservation. Coastal California north of San Francisco had been home to the Pomo and Yuki people for thousands of years. In the early 1800s, that area was visited by Russian, English, and French fur trappers. In 1850, an opium trader carrying goods from the Orient to gold-rush San Francisco shipwrecked near Fort Bragg. Would-be salvagers discovered giant redwood trees, and lumber mills soon sprang up at the mouth of every stream. "Dog-hole schooners" transported lumber, passengers, and supplies, and the world-wide Dollar Shipping Lines started here. Former reservation lands were acquired by lumber interests, and the city of Fort Bragg sprang up around them, all while photographers, artists, and writers documented the "far West." Today, the former California Western logging railroad transports tourists through the redwood forests. Hollywood movies continue to be set in the New England-style towns along the rocky Mendocino Coast, and Paul Bunyan Days celebrates old-time logging skills. The area's colorful past permeates and enriches local culture.

North American Forest and Conservation History

North American Forest and Conservation History
Author: Ronald J. Fahl
Publisher: Santa Barbara, Calif. : Published under contract with the Forest History Society [by] A.B.C.--Clio Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1977
Genre: History
ISBN:

Ronald J. Fahl has compiled a milestone reference work, one that offers historians and other interested scholars for the first time a reliable and comprehensive access to the widely scattered written materials that reveal the history of forestry, forest conservation, and forest industry in the United States and Canada. Sponsored by the Forest History Society and funded in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this volume covers published scholarly books and writings from many sources containing significant historical matter, including lumber trade journals, professional forestry journals, conservation magazines, government publications, state and local histories, autobiographies, and oral history interviews.

City of Wood

City of Wood
Author: James Michael Buckley
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2024
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1477330240

"In City of Wood, architectural historian James Buckley explores San Francisco's rapid urban development as a product of the physical and economic transformation of the natural environment of the American West. San Francisco is best known as a product of the gold and silver that were mined from California's mountains and streams, but as Buckley shows, the city's growth was in fact fueled by a wide range of natural resources that could be converted into marketable commodities. City of Wood investigates the architecture of a typical Western resource industry--redwood lumber--to determine how the exploitation of California's natural resources shaped the built environment of both San Francisco and its broader hinterland"--