There were gayer colors on our road than the dull browns and dark greens of the redwoods, for along the creeks the maples flamed in autumnal scarlet or glowed with yellow gold in the dark forest aisles. We passed through occasional open spaces, where we found belated wild flowers in full bloom—the purple foxglove, daisies, asters, and, more rarely, wild roses or azaleas smiled on us from the roadside. Not all the trees were redwoods, for we passed through closely standing groves where spruce, hemlock, and other varieties predominated.
The road came close to the shore just before we reached Orick, a small village whose inn is a famous resort for hunters and fishermen, and from a considerable eminence we looked down on Freshwater Lagoon, a fine body of water a mile long, literally alive with wild fowl. It is famous for its fishing, as are Big Lagoon and Stone Lagoon, a few miles farther on. Here the sportsman may take cut-throat and steel-head trout to the law’s limit, often in an hour or two, and all kinds of water fowl are plentiful in season. In this vicinity also, they told us, is the best quail shooting on the Pacific Coast—quite enough to distress a devotee of rod and gun whom circumstances forced to hurry onward. There are splendid camping sites galore along this road, sites which appealed even to ourselves, who were never strongly predisposed to camp life.
Trinidad, the next hamlet, dates from Spanish days, when it had the prefix of Puerto—for it is located on a small but deep harbor, where the early seafarers occasionally took shelter. Remains of the old landing-place may still be seen, but no ships disturb the quietude of Trinidad to-day. There is a rustic resort inn here which caters to summer visitors and sportsmen.
So far the road has been natural dirt, ranging from fair to good, and the grades, though often considerable, have not been at all troublesome to the big car. At Trinidad we caught up with the stage which left Crescent City some time ahead of us, and were interested to find that the cars which make this trip nearly every day in the year were of the same manufacture as our own.
Beyond Trinidad the road had mostly been surfaced and some of it was really excellent. The country, however, for some miles was dismal, indeed. Here was every evidence of a great forest fire of comparatively recent occurrence. Great blackened trunks were still standing, interspersed with stumps which showed that the country had been at least partially lumbered before the fire. The effect was melancholy and depressing, indeed, and brought to mind passages of Dante’s Inferno. A few poor little houses, many of them deserted, were scattered at intervals among the blackened stumps, and there were occasional cultivated patches of ground. No doubt the soil is excellent, but it will be many years before the giant stumps can be cleared away and the great holes left when they are burned or dynamited, filled up. We noted on our maps that we were to cross Mad River and imagined a dashing cataract in keeping with the name. We found the most prosaic of tide-water streams, level and almost stagnant, and the name, we were told, only referred to a quarrel between some early settlers in the section.
As we approached Arcata, fourteen miles by road from Eureka, though only half that distance directly across the bay, the country took on a much more prosperous look. The farm houses were neat with carefully kept lawns, and the well-cultivated fields ran down to the seashore. Arcata is a clean, bright-looking town, due to free application of paint to the wooden buildings, for wooden buildings are almost universal. A new eighty-thousand-dollar hotel was pointed to with due pride and one might do quite as well to stop here as in Eureka.
Beyond Arcata fine, level, dairy land prevails, fit for grazing the greater part of the year, and Humboldt County butter is quite as famous as that of Del Norte. Much of this land was originally forested with redwoods, and its splendid state of reclamation at present indicates that the forlorn, fire-blackened section we passed some miles back may have a future before it, after all. Huge redwood stumps remained along the road, each of them bearing a little garden of greenery flourishing upon the decay. The heavy rainfall of winter and the continual fogs of summer keep vegetation thrifty and green almost the entire year.
The road from Arcata skirts the shores of Humboldt Bay, which is nearly land-locked by a slender spit of sand. It is a good-sized body of water, some fourteen miles long and deep enough for ocean-going vessels, but an exceedingly treacherous coast in the vicinity militates against it as a harbor. A few days before our arrival a large steamer had gone to pieces on the rocks near by and a few months later a submarine and the cruiser Milwaukee, which undertook to rescue it, were both destroyed in this neighborhood.
Our first impression on coming into the business part of Eureka was of surprise to see a city of its size and importance almost wholly constructed of wood. The business blocks were nearly all of redwood, sometimes painted and carved to resemble stone, and the hotels, including the Vance, where we stopped, were of the same material. Of course, this is not so strange when one considers that redwood is by far the cheapest and most accessible building stuff in this region, but it is hard to associate permanence and substantial construction with huge wooden blocks in the business section of the city.
We reached our hotel about four o’clock, having been just eight hours in covering the ninety-four miles from Crescent City, including the half-hour we stopped for lunch—practically the same time occupied by the stages in making the trip. This may seem pretty slow, but it is all one should expect on this road if he adheres to sane and conservative driving.