Historic Landscapes – Historical Sites Society of Arcata

by Frances G. Beatty
April, 2014

(This article was originally published in the Northcoast Environmental Center’s newspaper, EcoNews (https://yournec.org).

ruins quote Landscape is a palimpsest, a complex medium with diverse layers and aspects both readily apparent and barely traceable after the first attempt at seeing them. The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary is such a place that has interwoven historical and contemporary narratives. Its notoriety is aptly based in monumental ecological restoration and the wildlife that finds it home there. However, there is a cultural history in this landscape—well, in fact, several histories.

Let’s take a look. We understand that the Wiyot peoples managed the indigenous landscape of the Humboldt Bay area for sustenance and merged specific places into their culture, such as Indian Island. Early settler accounts describe the bounteous flora and fauna of this “new territory”. Once the timber industry occupied the region, Arcata became a hub for the lumber, railroad, and shipping businesses. By 1860, Humboldt County ranked second in California counties for the production of lumber and had four operating sawmills. By 1892, there were 50 timber mills in Humboldt County that contributed to the international lumber market. The settlers sought opportunity and economic prosperity through technological progress and landscape consumption—all undertaken in an unsustainable industrial scale. After the Depression, only four lumber companies remained in business.

The timber industry’s impact on the Sanctuary ecologies can be further understood by inspecting the 1952 photo below. In the upper left corner, the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center site can be identified where a mill building abuts Butchers Slough Log Pond. Teepee burners used for incinerating mill waste punctuate the neighborhood. South I Street crosses diagonally from the lower left to the right top photo edge and meets the 1855 Arcata Wharf (extended in 1875). By 1892, the wharf was bustling with a capacity of 116 sailing vessels and 34 steamers—connecting the Jacoby Storehouse on the Plaza with worldwide commerce. Now eroding remnant pier posts and an historical identification plaque only mark the pier.

arcata plywood company 1952

With the demise of the lumber and railroad industries came the rise in 20^th-century environmental determinism, where ecological balance was the paean. In 1978, Arcata citizens rallied for an integrated wastewater system that used the natural treatment processes of marshes. By 1981, the first 75 acres of this abused landscape had been transformed into another industrial scaled landscape, this time for circulating wastewater effluent, wildlife habitat, and a public park. This creative reuse from a brownfield site into a multi-functional landscape was recognized in 1987 with a Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Innovations in Government Award. The 307 acre Sanctuary now includes 225 acres for a public park and 4.5 miles of walking and biking paths.

The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary and Interpretive Center 2011, by Frances G. Beatty

Today, we can identify a few fragmented layers of this landscape-palimpsest in the photo above. Rebuilt tidal marshlands recall the area’s indigenous landscape. The remnant mill piers and adjacent levees leave legible built works marking this location’s timber heritage and suggesting the large scale of its operations. The transformation of the Sanctuary landscape into a new proposition—a public park—indicates the social and public health importance of open spaces. A nearby railroad fragment combines with these features into a collage of incongruent landscape and built elements that reflect varying values on nature, industry, and progress.

The necessity of these ruins lies in a meditation on the cycles of life over generations: use, appropriation, consumption, degradation, and renewal weave into some sort of symbiotic and symbolic relationship. By keeping these historic built fragments in location with restored ecologies and features, we can better imagine and understand our varied stories—often several in one place.

The Big Cut-Off

Have you ever heard of the Big Cut-off on the Mad River? Chances are you’ve driven right on it.

During the winter of 1861-62 a series of giant storms pounded the North Coast. The largest floods ever known on most of the rivers were generated, probably even surpassing those of 1964 – although we don’t have gauge readings to confirm it. On the Mad River bottoms many of the farms and trails were inundated for days.

After the flood waters receded the farmers got together and decided they could reduce future damage by cutting off a big meander of the Mad River. Of course, reclaiming the land for pasture would be a big benefit too.

They decided to eliminate a 1.6 mile long meander of the river by digging a new channel across its neck. The following description appears in the February 4, 1888 issue of the Arcata Union newspaper under the “Then and Now” column.

“The summer following the flood…a canal or ditch was cut, commencing near the crossing at the Shaw place that diverted the water of the river from the old channel and made a new one, connecting with the old bed some miles below. Since that time more than 25 years ago (c.1862), the old bed of the river has been dry during the summer seasons, some of it having been converted into fields for pasture and agricultural purposes.”

This meander is shown on the map in Figure 1 which is a portion of the 1855 Township Plat Map. The south end of the meander was located just north of the current interchange of State Highways 101 and 299, where 299 heads east to Blue Lake. Traces of the meander can be seen in Figure 2 which is a portion of a 1941 aerial photograph.

Once the new channel was established and carried the whole flow of the river, farmers cleared the land of the old channel and converted it to pasture. Many acres of wetlands, river habitat used by anadromous fish, and riparian vegetation used by birds and wildlife were changed forever.