The first European presence in what is now known as Humboldt County occurred around 1775 with the arrival of Spanish ships in the Humboldt Bay area, and there are records of the Russian-American Fur Company entering Humboldt Bay in 1806. Starting with Jedediah Smith in 1827, there are stories of the occasional fur trapper who found his way through northwestern California en route from the Russian River to the Oregon coast.

However, it was not until the early 1850’s that the first settlers of European origin arrived in the Eel River Basin. A small party of gold miners from the North Fork Trinity River found themselves out of provisions in the fall of 1849 and set off on an expedition to find Trinidad Bay, the elusive harbor of the old Spanish charts, in hopes of establishing a supply route to the gold fields inland. That expedition did finally reach the coast in the Humboldt Bay area, after which the group split up. Half of the group under the leadership of Lewis K. Wood followed the South Fork of the Eel River and eventually traveled south over what was later to become the Sonoma Trail. The journal of L.K. Wood gives a detailed account of a terrifying encounter with 8 grizzlies on January 26, 1850 on the slopes of Bear Buttes (thus the name) just upstream of the confluence of Salmon Creek with the South Fork Eel River.

The following April a fleet of more than 40 ships departed San Francisco headed for Humboldt Bay, filled with shopkeepers, speculators and soldiers of fortune. News of the beautiful, lush country spread far and wide, and within just a few short years communities had sprung up around the bay and along the lower Eel River.

Trappers were probably the first European inhabitants of the back country to the south, but real settlement of this rugged area came more slowly, encouraged by the Homestead Act of 1862 which offered settlers a way to acquire cheap property, and also by the disappearance through violence and disease of most of the area’s aboriginal inhabitants. Those who settled the remote areas like Salmon Creek faced a life of hard work just to transport the necessities of life. The first pioneers packed in a few basic articles by mule or horseback: metal tools, nails, stoves, and kitchenware, some clothing, bedding, and footwear — maybe a few small glass windows, some seeds to plant and a few livestock. After that, they had to find a way of making a living on their own. Every few months, the pioneers might make a trip to the nearest town to replace worn-out tools, clothing and utensils, and to stock up on certain staples that even the hardiest of settlers found it almost impossible to do without: sugar, salt, and pepper, coffee, tobacco, etc. Large quantities of flour were also packed in, for although many settlers raised grain, few had the grist mills with which to grind it. To pay for their staples, the settlers had to raise a surplus of something that could be sold in town (bacon, ham, grain, etc.). If the herds of sheep or cattle were thriving, some could be driven in to be sold.

Trapping played an integral part in the lives of most early homesteaders, and was the major activity and source of income for some early residents. This practice, however, depleted many fur bearing animals, some to the point of extinction.

Salmon Creek was attractive to homesteaders for its open lands suitable for grazing and some limited farming. (A result of these land uses is that the native bunch grasses that grew in meadowlands were mostly replaced by grasses and weeds of European origin.) According to Ernie Rohl (personal communication), there were approximately the same number of homesteaders living in Salmon Creek at the turn of the century (1900) as there are today at the turn of this century (2000). Ernie remembered a school near “Indian Charlie’s” land (Charlie Briceland) in the upper watershed; Charlie took care of the children’s horses while they were in school.

Several surges of settlement occurred, spurred by the continued sale of 160-acre homesteads for $1.25/acre, and by 1900 ranches and farms dotted the prairies and riverside flats of Humboldt County producing meat, dairy goods, fruits, and vegetables. At that time the only community of any size between Garberville and Scotia was the crossroads center of Dyerville, located where the wagon road along the Main Eel met routes from Bull Creek and the South Fork Eel. There were overnight accommodations, called “stopping places” in Pepperwood, Englewood (Redcrest), Myers (Flat), and Phillipsville.

By 1912 the Northwestern Pacific Railroad had crossed the mainstem Eel opposite Dyerville and with the railroad came the loggers. The town of South Fork grew up around the depot and became the shipping point for ranch products of all kinds, tanbark and redwood. By 1914 passengers and goods were rolling between San Francisco and Humboldt by rail, and at the same time the “Redwood Highway” was being constructed for the new automobiles. It was completed in 1922.

Gordon Tosten related this story about his family’s early life in Salmon Creek: Gordon’s grandparents homesteaded near Ettersburg in the Mattole Watershed, coming from the east by wagontrain on the northern migration route through Idaho (where his dad was born) and down the Columbia River Valley. In the early 1920’s, when Gordon was a little boy, his father moved his family from Ettersburg to a flat in the Salmon Creek Watershed near the confluence of three streams known today as South Fork Salmon Creek (called Little Salmon in those times), Tosten Creek, and Kinsey Creek. They dismantled the house in Ettersburg and moved it all the way over to Salmon Creek on a sled and re-erected it. Then his Dad sold the land down on Little Salmon to buy the ranch up on Bear Buttes — and once again moved the house. Gordon remembers tearing the house apart board by board and straightening all those nails. In Ettersburg the family had raised milk goats and had a cheese factory, but when they bought the land up on the Buttes, they turned to sheep ranching. They also peeled tanbark, traveling and camping in stands of tanoak timber (the high-quality tanoak on the Tosten Ranch at Salmon Creek had already been harvested for tanbark before Gordon’s dad bought the land). In addition, they worked on road crews, trapped, and eventually logged, always working extremely hard just to make ends meet and keep the ranch going.

Gordon attended the Oakdale School built in 1928 (Figure 1-7) on the flat just upstream from the confluence of Mill Creek and Salmon Creek, along with Warren Smith’s children (the mother, aunt, and uncles of Harry Vaughn, current watershed resident still living on his family homestead), the Stansberry boys (who lived on the Samuels Ranch), the Thomas boys. It took Gordon about an hour to ride his horse down the ridge and across the old wooden bridge over Salmon Creek, and some of the students had even longer rides. Later other local residents including the Wallans and the Swinnocks attended Oakdale School.

From the memoirs of Gerould Hammond Smith (Harry Vaughn’s uncle): In 1884 Gerould’s grandfather moved from a farm near Eureka to homestead the property where his descendants live today in lower Salmon Creek. Warren Smith (Gerould’s father and Harry’s grandfather) took his bachelor’s degree at Stanford University in 1912 and brought back his knowledge of horticulture and scientific agriculture to develop the by then neglected orchards of the Sunny Slope Farm (Figure 1-8). He also had learned blacksmithing in college, and with his own forge, anvil and smithy tools was able to shoe his own horses, repair his farm machinery, and set tires on his wagons. The family also had a small herd of sheep, a milk cow, a herd of pigs, and extensive vegetable and flower gardens. The barn, still standing, was used for threshing grain and for packing the tons of apples, peaches, and plums that were shipped out each year. When Gerould and his siblings were small, transportation on the farm was by sled, springboard wagon, walking or horseback. They had a Model T Ford garaged across the river for trips to Ferndale at Christmas, but they had to boat the river in the winter to get to the car.

Gerould recalled an early memory of the occasional visit from Mr. Edgeman, who lived with his mother near the headwaters of Salmon Creek (Figure 1-10):

Mr. Edgeman. . . always dressed in campaign hat, pants and coat like a park ranger, and leather puttees. He rode a horse with a rifle strapped to the saddle and led a pack train of two or three horses or mules. He always stopped at the Smith ranch for fruit and visiting after loading up on canned goods, flour, and other groceries at Miranda. (This must have been in the 1920’s.) His mother was nineteen when she went in to the homestead with a friend. They were stalked on the way in by an Indian who was shot by the two girls. I was told that she never once left the homestead after that time until she became seriously ill at the age of ninety. She was carried out because there was no road to the Edgeman home. She was taken out tied into a rocking chair slung between two horses. Dad was one of those who helped bring her out. She knew about airplanes because they flew over their home, but she had never heard a radio.

The transition from homesteads to ranches happened gradually in Salmon Creek as the menfolk from the early settler families left home for longer periods and at greater distances in search of jobs peeling tanbark, building roads, making split stuff, or wherever work could be found to earn a living. This left the women and children at home, and eventually led to the dissolution of the homesteads. Some of the early homestead families bought out the lands of their neighbors, and this led to the formation of the earliest ranches (Figure 1-10).

When Ticki Robinson Early Romanini was five, her mother and stepbrother bought the Kinsey Ranch “out at Salmon Creek. It was about 3,400 acres and they bought it and put cattle on it. The old Kinsey ranch house was there, a big one-room place. No running water inside, no bathroom inside, a big porch around. So, we had our beds out there in the summertime, had a sleeping porch. Huge big fig tree, wonderful figs. And you pumped your water into a barrel out on the porch.” When Ticki was nine, her mother married Pat Brightman, a sheep rancher from Bridgeville, and “he said you could make a lot more money off of sheep than you could cattle.” So, the ranch became a sheep ranch.

Ticki has many wonderful stories to tell about her life on the ranch: “We are just ranchy people. And I just don’t think there’s a better life anyplace or more wholesome than raising everything you have to have, practically except your clothes; and we were raising wool. You know, the life was wonderful.”

The 1921 map (Eureka Historical Society) (Figure 1-10) shows property ownership during this transitional phase, and the larger ranches are roughly in the same configuration as today (Chase is Tosten, Thomas is Thomas, Hillandale and Kinsey is Early, Samuels is Samuels, Hunter is Sunnyside, and Burnell is Chapman). The population was much lower during this period when larger ranches occupied most of the watershed.

Interestingly, Salmon Creek was well-known during Prohibition as the plentiful source of some of the best “bootleg” whiskey in the area, and there are stories of active stills in the watershed into the 1950’s (personal communication, Dave Stockton, HRSP historian).

Before 1947 timber harvesting at Salmon Creek occurred mostly in the lower watershed where redwoods were harvested for “split stuff”: railroad ties, grapestakes, fence posts, and shingle bolts. Kenny Swinnock recalls that when his family first came to Salmon Creek, Mill Creek was “the biggest mess you ever saw. When I was in fourth or fifth grade there (1942) you could hardly even walk-up Mill Creek. There was nothing but big ol’ trees laying in that creek — stakes and stuff all over that creek and there was steelhead everywhere.”

Before 1947 Douglas-fir was not considered merchantable timber. Ticki Early Romanini remembers how she earned money during several summers in her early teens: her step-father showed her how to ring trees on the edges of meadows with a double bitted ax to kill them so he could burn them to increase grazing space for the sheep. She also fell some of the smaller trees herself. She earned a penny a tree, and one summer she remembers earning $34.00. “…So much destruction that we didn’t know what was coming ahead.”

The first local cutting of Douglas-fir began around 1947 as a result of two changes: Post-World War II technology came to the forest: tanks became dozers, and the post-war building boom caused a sky-rocketing demand for lumber. The previously “worthless” fir forests were suddenly of great value, and a new source of employment was created. Following the war land developers began to buy timber (and sometimes, but not always, the land on which it grew), and mills sprang up everywhere. In the 1950’s there were at least seven mills at Salmon Creek. Some of these mills were known as “brush mills”, small mills set up on a temporary basis close enough to a good stand of fir that all the trees cut could be skidded to the mill. When the stand was depleted, the mill was dismantled and moved to another site. At the bottom of Salmon Creek there were two larger mills which cut full dimension finished lumber. Gil Wallan recalls working for 6 or 7 logging seasons in the 1950’s hauling logs on his truck from Salmon Creek to nearby mills.

Timber harvest continued at Salmon Creek through the l950’s and 60’s, until by the late 1960’s most of the merchantable trees had been removed. Land developers began to buy up the ranches and logged-over land to be subdivided in 40- and 80-acre parcels to “back-to-the-landers.” Ticki Early Romanini remembers: “I guess I was probably the last sheep rancher to leave out there. And that was in 1972. Thomas Ranch and Samuels Ranch sold, and they were subdivided. And then some undesirable people moved up there from maybe San Francisco, and they brought a lot of dogs with them. And when they went back to San Francisco in the fall, they’d leave their dogs. And so, it was just… it was a massacre for me. And I think I was the last sheep rancher out there. It really broke my heart.”

Since that time a large portion of the Salmon Creek Watershed has been inhabited by “new settlers”, who are making their own impact on the watershed. At this time the number of landowners in the entire watershed is around two hundred (based on ownership maps from the County Assessor’s office), with an estimated population twice that, which is similar to the numbers at the turn of the century and possibly close to the population of the Lolangkok Sinkyone before their annihilation.

The “new settlers” that moved into Salmon Creek beginning in the late 1960’s more often than not purchased property that had been stripped of all merchantable trees, had very poor access roads, and had many erosion problems leftover from past land uses. If it is possible to characterize such a diverse group of people, perhaps it could be said that most had grown up in cities or suburbs, most had little common sense or understanding of (but great interest in) the processes of nature, most were not necessarily dependent on the natural resources of the watershed for a living, and in general most tended to be independent individualists. The back-to-the-landers wanted to take care of their already misused land, but they had no established proven skills or science of land stewardship to use as a guide. These skills needed to support a healthy ecosystem are still in the process of development.

Some of the changes brought to the watershed by the new settlers are: more roads to access homes, outbuildings, firewood, etc.; more vehicle use as many residents drive daily to jobs in towns, schools, shopping, etc.; more water use as more people drink, wash, garden, and enjoy recreational ponds, etc.; more domestic animals which impact the native wildlife. In addition, like the bootleg whiskey of the 1920’s and the logging of the 1950’s and 60’s, the development of an underground “pot” (marijuana) economy in the 1970’s brought an economic boost to the area.

The new settlers too are having a significant impact on the watershed, and this assessment is one more step along the path of understanding how to become better stewards of the land. It must be noted here that this section is brief because of the difficulties inherent in writing objectively about the present: there is no time or space between the story and the storytellers.

The Salmon Creek Watershed has been significantly affected by the forces of nature in combination with the impacts of both Native American and European human inhabitants:

a. Fire: For countless generations Native Americans set fires each year to clear the ground under oak trees to protect their potential harvest from the oak moth. Until fairly recent times homesteaders and ranchers set fires at times to clear forest land for grazing or to clear an area of insect pests. In addition, wildfires have always been part of the landscape history, sometimes burning unchecked for weeks without technology or manpower to control them. Gordon Tosten recalls a fire when he was about 8 (around 1929) that burned a large percentage of the Salmon Creek Watershed, and he recalled that it also burned through major portions of Humboldt County. He said it was so smoky that “your eyes were just crying all the time and you couldn’t breathe. It was so smoky, we lost our apples — they were just too smoky to eat.” The regular occurrence of fires prior to European settlement prevented the buildup of fuels (fallen debris and understory growth), so that when fires did occur early in the century, they burned cooler and slower and tended to clear the debris and to kill only the weak or damaged trees.

In recent years no large wildfires have occurred in the watershed. Intentional or controlled fires have not been used as a management tool at Salmon Creek. This lack of fires in the recent past (which for millennium had been a natural element of the watershed ecology) has certainly changed vegetation patterns and could eventually result in a devastating burn due to the buildup of fuels.

b. Tanbark industry: Another major human impact came in the cutting of nearly all accessible old-growth tanoak for the harvesting of tanbark. This was one of the major industries of the region from the early part of the century and continued until the 1950’s when the development of synthetic tannins made the harvesting of tanbark obsolete. The tanbark was peeled from the fallen trees and sent off by rail or ship to the Bay Area for use in leather tanneries. (There was also a plant in Briceland that converted the bark into tannin extract, making it much easier to ship.) The stripped tanoak were left lying on the ground: “It was such a shame,” remembers Gordon Tosten. “All that solid solid tanoak would have made beautiful lumber. It was solid like fir trees.” There is a story of one of the last Lolangkok Sinkyone in the Briceland area looking around at what had been a tanoak forest; he said, “I feel as if I am seeing my people lying on the ground with their skin cut off.” Although tanoak does sprout, Gordon recalls that it never really seemed to come back the way it was, and it is impossible based on the information available today for us to know what effect the tanbark industry had on the composition of today’s forests.

c. Logging: The impact on Salmon Creek and other northcoast watersheds of logging and the access roads to remove timber is well documented. In Salmon Creek the earliest logging brought the removal of all accessible old growth redwood along the lower creek. Beginning after World War II nearly all of the merchantable Douglas-fir in the watershed was taken. In those days there were few regulations and fewer people to enforce the regulations that did exist. It was common practice to place roads, skid trails and landings in creeks so the logs could be skidded downhill. Roads and skid trails that were neither maintained nor drained diverted water from many natural watercourses, often causing extensive gullies. At that time it was not known how damaging such practices would prove to be to the natural resources; the damage occurred not through bad intentions, but through a general ignorance of the natural processes.

Major flood events often triggered landslides, many on poorly planned and/or constructed roads. Where the land was burned after logging to convert forest to grazing land, even more unprotected soil was left to erode. Slash was left in streams or slid into streams, often creating impassable fish barriers and massive sediment traps. The combination of misguided land use practices and large flood events in 1955 and 1964 caused major aggradation (sediment build up) in most streams in the Salmon Creek Watershed. Aggradation buried or destroyed the natural armoring of the stream banks (rocks, large woody debris, and vegetation) which allowed high flows to scour banks, causing a new round of bank failures and slides.

Although no written records of stream conditions were found, anecdotal stories from longtime residents of the Salmon Creek Watershed as well as evidence based on air photos lead to the conclusion that it was the major floods of 1955 and 1964, following extensive timber harvest, that caused the major devastation that occurred in streams like Salmon Creek. (See Figures I-9 and I-10.) A few of the most common observations about changes in the watershed follow:

Salmon Creek used to have more and deeper holes. Kenny Swinnock remembers, “Nothin’ but holes, one after another…..swimmin’ holes way over your head. I musta’ been at least 5’ tall in those days. It was like that till the ‘55 flood.” (These holes were in the Hideaway Hills area, 2-3 miles upstream from the confluence with the South Fork Eel River.

Gordon Tosten remembers a deep swimming hole near the confluence of South Fork Salmon, Tosten and Kinsey Creeks (approximately 4 miles upstream from the confluence of South Fork Salmon Creek and Mainstem Salmon Creek). There was another “upstream a little bit from Bogus Creek….There was this great big rock and that’s where we’d swim. Now THAT was a deep hole. Musta’ been 15 to 20 feet deep in there kinda’ underneath the shelf of this rock.” (This large rock, approximately 2 miles upstream from the confluence of South Fork Salmon Creek and Mainstem Salmon Creek) is still easily identifiable, and the hole today is only 2’ or 3’ deep.)

Ticki Early Romanini remembers that after the floods “they just didn’t have the pools any more. It was so odd, because there was just a lot of sand and gravel and you didn’t see the great big boulders like you had.”

The biggest change in the creek occurred after the ‘55 flood. “That one flood (1955) changed this creek from all those holes to a huge gravel bar — that’s what it was. You could absolutely drive a 4-wheel drive all the way up the creek. No problem.” (Kenny Swinnock)

That change drastically affected the fish in Salmon Creek. “I remember there used to be three kinds of fish in Carter Creek, the first creek past Bart Swinnock’s place (approximately 3 miles upstream from the confluence of Salmon Creek with the South Fork Eel River) — the kings, the silvers, and the steelhead — all there. The creek was only a few feet wide….. But that flood (’55) ruined it. There was no fish up there for a LONG time after that. Fact, I don’t think I ever caught another fish out of that creek after the flood. In fact, years later it was still (plugged with sediment) clear to the top and running over into the fields. After ‘55 we could still go down to Salmon Creek and catch a steelhead every now and then when things were just right. But they never really came back like they were.” (Kenny Swinnock)

There was more canopy cover. The earliest air photos (1942) of the lower four miles of the watershed show that except for a few wide, low gradient reaches (for example, Hideaway Hills) or where redwood had been removed for split stuff, there was complete canopy cover . All the long time residents interviewed recall big (non-timber) trees along the creek in the early days — many alder and willow, with some cottonwood and a few maples. Gordon remembered “how dark it was down in the creek” downstream from the confluence of Tosten Creek with South Fork Salmon Creek (approximately 4 miles from the confluence of the South Fork Salmon Creek with Mainstem Salmon Creek).

d. Grazing: It is unknown what specific effects grazing may have had on the Salmon Creek Watershed. Grazing can make grasslands more susceptible to erosion, especially if the land is overgrazed, through competition, changes in the grass species, trail networks, and destabilization of hillslopes and stream banks from vegetative loss. Grazing can also put pressure on riparian vegetation, and in some watersheds it has been a major factor in the loss of riparian trees.

e. Subdivision: The cost of building roads was often the main concern of the subdividers when they developed a parcel, so wherever possible, they incorporated already existing logging or ranch roads. When new roads were needed, there was usually no professional planning, which meant that the quality of the layout usually depended on the varying degrees of skill and knowledge of the equipment operators who built the roads. (Indeed, on such steep and/or unstable slopes the challenge of building good roads may have been more appropriate for experienced operators than college trained engineers.) The general result, however, is that subdivision roads are often neither located correctly nor constructed to stand up under the year-round intensive usage to which they have been subjected. Review of some of these roads during the sediment delivery inventory for this assessment shows a number of problems, including undersized and poorly placed culverts, poor alignment, poor drainage, insufficient gravel base, etc.

f. Demographics and Technology: The native Americans were concentrated in villages along the creek for part of the year and were nomadic for the remainder. Family units probably used less water in a day than one flush of a toilet or five minutes of sprinkling a rose garden. There is no evidence of impact that caused erosion leading to sedimentation of the streams.

The homesteaders near the turn of the century were spread out across the watershed similarly to today’s inhabitants. They did not have the cheap technology, however, to divert water from natural watercourses (pumps and black plastic pipe), nor did they have machines to build roads or vehicles to drive on them. Trips to town for supplies were by horseback once or twice a year. Even as late as the 1950’s, the ranchers only drove to town once a week (Swinnock, personal communication), and there were only five families on approximately 18,000 acres, 75% of the watershed.

The single biggest change from the subdivision of large ranches into parcels as small as 20 acres was the development of roads for access to every parcel. Sediment delivery inventories conducted for this assessment on approximately 10% of the watershed found approximately 7+ miles of road per square mile on lands surveyed. Many of these small parcels now have more than one family residence. The easy development of water has enabled today’s families to have large gardens, spring fed swimming ponds, and other conveniences unknown in earlier times. Most families have at least two vehicles and multiple trips to town per family per day are common to allow for jobs, school, volunteer work, recreation, etc. Although past populations of humans may have been near current levels, the impacts on the natural resources was much lower.

g. Pollution: Despite the fact that there is no industrial presence in the watershed, landowners expressed concern about possible pollution from chemicals and fossil fuel spills. Recently several diesel spills in the Southern Humboldt area have been covered extensively on the local news, which has heightened awareness among Salmon Creek residents. There is concern that the number of spills reported is fewer than those actually occurring and whether used oil from generators is being disposed of safely. Although the threat to fish from fossil fuel pollution is acknowledged, residents feel even more concern about the threat to domestic water sources for themselves and future generations.

The accumulation of toxins (phosphates) in our system, due to the use of non-biodegradable soaps, detergents, and cleansers, is also of special concern to some residents. Phosphates are especially toxic to the larval stages of amphibians, like the pacific giant salamander, which were once abundant in our watershed.

h. Fisheries Enhancement Projects: Ironically, even some past fishery restoration efforts by resource agencies have resulted in a negative impact on the fisheries resource in the watershed. The “science” of watershed restoration is always evolving: more understanding leads to the development of new techniques. In hindsight, it has been discovered that the practice of clearing large woody debris (LWD) in log jams to open up blocked streams causes more damage than good because of the removal of critical habitat structures. In addition, the propagation of fish in local hatcheries has threatened the integrity of native gene pools and caused risk of disease to native stock.

In summary, humans are a critical part of our environment, and we have had and continue to have major impacts on our natural environment. The reason for including the watershed history in this assessment is not to point out mistakes or cast blame, but to document the past and learn from it to protect the future of out precious natural resources.