Fort Humboldt

Fort Humboldt State Historic Park

(map link)

I checked the Calparks site for Fort Humboldt to see that the park is currently "open at limited capacity", whatever that means. Perhaps no school bus trips will be around? There's only about a dozen parking spots for the public, and none of them has been blocked off. Then there's a list of what is open including the museum! So I said time to go again so that this time I can wander the museum. I neglected to get suspicious that the list also contains "beaches", which is an interesting inclusion since there are no beaches connected to the fort.

The picnic area at Fort Humboldt. Not all of this was parade grounds at the time of the fort.

I decided to loop around clockwise, going on the self guided interpretive trail first. This has the advantage of getting the signs in the order they were meant to be read. Once or twice, they assume the reading order, so it makes a little more sense. It also comes very quickly to the old hospital, the only original building remaining. I rounded it up onto the porch only to find that it is "closed for renovations". The windows are all covered with expanded images of a medical textbook of the time. I pondered one where a skull was being ground out in a clover patter with no explanation offered but greatly needed, then continued on. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a second museum type thing somewhere on the grounds, but I don't know where it might be.

The old hospital with closed museum inside.

The garden beside it is looking a little scruffy, but still managed a couple blooms. I continued past the ghost of the commissary and lieutenants' quarters and pondered which dent in the land was the remaining evidence of the original wagon road to the fort, then on to the surgeon's quarters, a second historic building. This one is also museum like in that the front rooms are set up as they might have been, but it is not open to entry. (The brochure says "The period house museum in the reconstructed surgeon's quarters is open for viewing.")

Lining on a steamer trunk seems very nice indeed.

Then on around, past the ghosts of the company quarters and officers' quarters and commanding officer's quarters. The path makes a square around the small piece of what is now lawn that was parade grounds.

It's a bit noisier now with the highway traveling at the bottom of the bluff and the mall not quite hiding the distant scenery.

One sign shows a picture of the fort from the late 1800s to compare with what is here today.

Then I came to the outdoor logging exhibit. This also has some museum like features. Perhaps these things that are open even when the doors are locked is why it claims online that the museum is open.

A small cabin with plenty of room for a snooze and an eat shows the luxurious life of the freelance lumberjack while pictures on the sign show the crowded conditions in larger cabins of the more common lumberjack.

Battling the glare of the sun on plexiglass and window to see inside the cabin.

A pair of well broken in hobnail boots are tucked into one display.

Ever larger steam donkeys, invented in Eureka, are on display. The absolute monster is hiding behind the tree in the middle of this picture.

This wasn't a day they brought out the engines, so I again just had to squint through the highly reflective glass at the two coal burners in their sheds.

The old Falk engine would be really cool to see out in the light.

So no museum after all, but still lots of displays.

There's a lot more city here now. It doesn't quite block the view of the mountains yet.

*photo album*




©2021 Valerie Norton
Written 23 Dec 2021