Stories on Edward’s trip across the country are sparse, and for a time Edwards dropped off the radar and no one knew if he had made it. In May 1910, The Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review published a story that mentioned Edwards –  

 While Edwards was still on the road, a colorful character named Dan Green arrived in New York:

 The following month- Edwards arrived in New York with two wheels instead of 1. Unicycling, he claimed, was too much work. That is probably an understatement, especially considering that there were large swaths of the country that didn’t have anything resembling a road, so he switched to a motorcycle. However, while riding a motorcycle, he hit a guardrail and broke two ribs- then kept riding on.

 In August of 1910, Edwards appears in papers as a trick motorcyclist rider widely praised in San Jose, performing on a motor cycle and unicycle at an event where there was also motorcycle racing going on a track featuring curves at a 45 degree angle.

 Edwards died in Illinois on September 9, 1912 in a motorcycle accident. Motor cycles used in racing at the time ran at 100 miles an hour, had no breaks, and riders wore leather helmets. Additionally, the tracks used for racing placed spectators just above the 45 degree (or more) banked track, meaning if a cyclist went off the track, they could easily fly, motorcycle and all, into the crowd. Edwards’ death made national news. Motorcyclist deaths in races were becoming more common, and the racing ended in 1913.

San Jose Mercury, 1 Aug 1910:

For outstanding images of these historic tracks, be sure to see:

http://www.ridingvintage.com/2012/12/the-motordrome-board-track-motorcycle.html

Thank you to Jim Garrison for assistance in uncovering this story!

 During the Pandemic, you may have noticed shortages in stores- baking products, toilet paper, coin currency, bikes, camping gear, and much more. A while ago, on a sunny afternoon, I noticed my roller blades sitting by the front door. Pre-pandemic, I went to the Municipal Auditorium on Fridays to roller skate, but hadn’t tried skating outside. I think the last time I did that, I was like 10 and I went with my mom and she fell in a bush… More recently, I’ve been scared I’d hit a rock, fall over, break an arm or my teeth or something like that. 

To finally move past my fear, and get some more movement in my life, last weekend I went and got a mouthguard, geared up in elbow, knee, and wrist guards, plus a helmet and took to the boardwalk on my roller blades . It was kind of embarrassing, but eventually, I got back into the swing of it and got some practice avoiding rocks and other random things on the trail.

I didn’t like how unstable my ankles felt, so I swapped out my blades for the more traditional side-by-side 4 wheel skates with a toe brake, and it’s a whole new learning curve. Trying to skate with them for the first time on a slight incline with high winds probably didn’t help much. But, while, I was skating, it got me thinking- who the heck came up with the idea to put some wheels on shoes and wheel around? So, I looked into it. I figured the Victorians had something to do with it since they had  a thing for potentially dangerous modes of transportation...

 In the 1880s, mass production was in full swing due to the industrial revolution in Europe, and roller skates were included in the scaling up of production. Rinks began to pop up throughout New England and London, with the increase in “rinkomania”. Indoor roller skating became realized for its medical benefits, and outdoor roller skating was recognized for its efficient transportation benefits- benefits that might even be used by military forces (that didn’t pan out, but could you imagine...).

These early skate iterations were usually still metal, with straps that attached to your shoes, making them removable. They didn’t roll very smoothly, and were still rudimentary and metal.

In 1898, the quad skate reached the form that we recognize today, with ball bearings in the wheels to encourage smooth rolling of the wheels. Production materials have changed since then, but the structure is generally the same. Improvements in plastics have made them more lightweight and replaced some of the metal pieces that used to be in the skates.  

 In 1902, a large roller rink in Chicago opened, called the Chicago Coliseum. 30 years later, the first roller derby competition hosted by the Roller Skate Rink Owners Association at the Coliseum became the birthplace of roller derby. The golden age of roller skating began a few years later with the national organization of the Roller Skate Rink Owners Association. Roller skating was considered an excellent escape from WWII and in the 1940s, 8,000 rinks operated nation wide and an estimated 18,000,000 people skated.

 Roller rinks were centers for community life in the 1960s, and were some of the most difficult places to desegregate. The film, United Skates, explores the integral nature of roller rinks in communities through time and how theme nights like Soul Night at rinks became places Black individuals “didn’t have to abide by white rules, listen to white music, or play by white standards. They were free to be their complete selves and that is how this culture was able to thrive.” The film also explores how rinks continue to be segregated today through theme nights, like Adult Night and Family Night.

 In the 1970s, disco music and roller skating collided and caused a resurgence in skating. Economic downturns and the fall of disco led to the closure of many rinks, but this period in skating history is memorialized in shows like “That 70s Show”, Patrick Suaze's debut in Skatetown USA, Roller Boogie, and in music videos. Dancing in skates wasn’t unprecedented either, in the early 1910s and 1920s, skate dances were also popular.

 Inline skates arrived at their modern form in the 1970s with the renovation of a 1960s inline skate to feature an ice hockey boot and wheels for hockey training off ice. These skates, later branded Rollerblades, have become a household name.  

Skating declined over time, but has experienced a resurgence in the early 2000s with the popularity of roller derby in films and the COVID pandemic while people look for things to do outside.

Locally, roller derby picked up in 2006 when Humboldt Roller Derby founder Jennifer McMahon started Humboldt Roller Derby. The early team trained at the Blue Lake Roller Rink with former football coach Coach Mojo. They began competing in 2008 as the North Jetty Bettys and the Widow Makers, and have since become a nonprofit organization, donated $25,000 to local organizations, established a youth team called the Redwood Saplings, and have traveled nationally and internationally to compete in tournaments. Their season this year was put on hold, but you’ll frequently see people decked out in HRD gear zipping around on their skates.

What's the first thing you think of when you hear "Distance Learning?" Zoom calls? That one time your kid was in class and another kid in another window ran unexpectedly pantsless through the video? By now, many students have been in virtual classes for a few months and the novelty of "pantsless Peter" has worn off. But, did you know that distance learning isn't a very new thing? Of course, it's internet iteration is relatively new, but distance learning as a concept dates to the earliest back to the 1700s, but came into vogue in the mid 1800s, around the same time that the postal service in the US was becoming modernized and when Humboldt County was being established.

Other iterations of distance learning included radio, in 1923 when 10% of operating radio stations were owned by educational institutions to educate students over the radio. With the widespread development and use of the television, institutions like the University of Wisconsin Madison pioneered televised instruction that was duplicated in other countries. In the 1980s, National Technological University used satellite television technology to broadcast live courses where students could ask questions on the air along with pre-recorded sessions. With the rise of the internet, the first all online accredited higher education institution began in 1993 with 5 bachelors programs and 24 masters programs.

​Rural Humboldt County in the 1850s had no universities until Humboldt State Normal School was established in 1913, so  correspondence courses allowed local adults to educate themselves despite distance. Class materials were mailed to students, and they could practice and hone a number of skills from bookkeeping to workers safety.

​The materials on display, from 1928, were for a business course hosted by W.H. Goodwin. The ledgers, fake money, and invoices gave students a chance to work on their skills balancing books, keeping records, and doing transactions in the comfort of their own home. After completing the class, they would receive a certificate.

​Students received an envelope of materials including ledgers, receipts, stationary and more, along with bundles of envelopes containing a month’s worth of transactions for a fictional company. Following a pink sheet listing the businesses’ dealings over the month and reading included invoices and price lists, the student would process the transactions into provided record books and produce receipts to practice their bookkeeping and administrative skills. 

​Correspondence course materials courtesy of Joann Bauer, Humboldt County Historical Society. The materials are from her mother. Be sure to take a close look at the prices on the items!

Sources:
https://partners.pennfoster.edu/blog/2015/february/a-glimpse-into-the-past-penn-foster-celebrates-125-years-of-educating-the-non-traditional-learner
Distance Learning- From Correspondence Courses to Zoom
https://daily.jstor.org/three-centuries-of-distance-learning/

It's been a little bit since my last post! Things have been pretty busy, despite us still being closed to the public. We still aren't sure when the County will allow us to reopen, but rest assured, we have a plan to reopen as soon as the County gives the green light.

Jim and I rapidly put together a plan to determine how much material was to be moved, find a place for the newspapers and get volunteers to help move on a really quick schedule. 

Why does this matter? While these newspapers are pretty much all microfilmed - scanned onto small pieces of film that can be scanned and read through a specialty machine. It's a standard for document preservation- however when images are microfilmed, they are often disfigured or completely unrecognizable. Having access to the actual print papers allows for scanning using a digital scanning, preservation of the images, and another copy of the papers in case something happens to other collections (redundancy). Scans of these papers can also be made available to  free services like the UC Riverside California Digital Newspaper Collection and paid services like Newspapers.com.

I visited the archive the following day to size up the challenge. Check out the video above- the boxes were documents that the company had to have shredded due to confidential employment information so we didn't take those. You can see the large books- those each contain a month's worth of newspapers.

​I measured how much material there was to move: about 360 cubic feet- imagine a cubic foot as the size of a bankers box or a basketball. We had papers from the late 1980s through the early 2000s, along with bound copies of the Humboldt Beacon, a smaller paper that eventually was added into the Times- Standard from the late 1940s into the 1960s. The room was dark, and everything smelled like dust and newspaper ink. Thomas told me that the floor where the printing press was (about 20 feet below the room we were in, but could be seen through a window in the storage room) had about an inch of dust and printing ink on the ground when the presses were taken out! Some of the papers were bound in books, each book containing one month and usually a funny doodle on the cover, while others were rubber banded or tied together. One whole section had fallen over and from the dust on it, looked like it had been there for a while. ​

By the end of that day, we had a location figured out, and a few volunteers who would be meeting at the building the following day at noon.  I had no idea how we would be able to move everything out in a day. 

In the end, all the papers made it over to the Historical Society to be processed. Duplicate papers will be removed and the collection will eventually be scanned and down the road made available to the public- although that is going to take a while due to the logistics of processing such a large collection. 

As a curator from a sister institution, I was happy to pitch in on helping with this project, as it'll benefit all of our organizations to have good and locally accessible documentation of events over the course of our region's history. This is only the beginning for the project. I look forward to seeing what comes of it in the future.

Thank you to everyone who helped out, including Jim and his family, Thomas, Milt, Dana and David, Kurt, and Corey.

​The posters are pretty large, some of them are almost 40 inches wide and are twice as long, while others are smaller. With the exception of about two of them, they are in stellar condition with minimal tape marks or pinholes. I’m not entirely sure that they were ever used.  Most are from Cecile’s original collection, some were donated by individual donors over the years. 

​These posters are really interesting to spend time looking at, and get more interesting as you learn more about them. They were produced by the Office of War Information to promote full engagement of the civilian population in supporting the war effort however possible. Some were positive, like the “Plant a Victory Garden” or “Buy War Bonds”, asking people to take action with attractive images and artwork. The ones I was most surprised to see were the ones that used fear as a motivating feature to get people to not do something- like talking about anything related to the war effort when outside of work (if you were in a war industry). The phrase “loose lips sink ships” came into being thanks to one of these posters. The idea was that spies for enemy countries could be anywhere, and information on the war effort could lead to incredible losses for the Allies. 

When Jim and I were going through the posters, I told him that I was pretty sure most were from WWII, but a few WWI posters could be peppered in. I recognized the helmets shown in the pictures below as indicative of WWI era uniforms, but the inclusion of the Jeep and WWII era firearms said otherwise. These details, along with other details we noticed from processing the posters and discussions we had made the 3 hours of scanning feel like they went by very quickly. Some of the thoughts that came up appear in the Clarke's webpage about WWII posters here. 

​It took some figuring out on how to get the files from the Historical Society to the Clarke, as the files were almost 50 gigabytes of data. I had to get a thumb drive large enough to transfer them over, then convert the files to be small enough they could be shared online. It’s a process I’m still working with, but it’s giving me a chance to learn how to manage collections as they go digital, which will be really important as we continue digitizing.

​I’ve been seeing many people writing about the explosion of digitization that is taking place now that museums and archives are closed to the public. Digitization has been an important and often sidelined part of being in a museum, not so we can get rid of the originals and free up space, but to make materials more accessible to the public. When everything is digitized, if a researcher contacts us for pictures of say, Ferndale, we can do a search on our database, compile the photos, and send them their way. It saves them a trip here, and it saves the photos from being looked through and potentially damaged (minute damage happens even when the most careful people handle items!). it also allows us to reprint images for exhibits, postcards, and other uses without needing to rescan images.

So, without further ado, I’ve included a few of the posters we’ve scanned in this article and below. My plan is to get all of them up on our WWII memorial webpage, which can be seen here, but it may take some time. So here’s a teaser! Click on any of the photos below for a larger image. 

I try to get clever with the titles for these blog posts, this one may just be a little over the top. But maybe it worked as an eyecatcher? Anyway, you're here now, so let's get on with it!

Unfortunately, as far as I know, Humboldt County hasn't had a bobsled team, but we have had a good number of sports stars come out of our region. I like to think that it's because there's so much room out here and clean air compared to other parts of the state, making it a great place to get out and get some fresh air (when the weather is nice!). Today, I'll be sharing some stories of locally, nationally, and internationally famous runners and sports races. Go ahead and curl up on the couch with a cozy blanket for some Cool Runnings(tories).

​In the 1920s, women were not legally entitled to participate in sports teams at school, including universities (the famous Title IX made access to women’s sports a rights in the 1970s) as women’s participation in sports was thought to be unladylike. Men’s sports were plentiful, but it was usually due to perseverance or incredible successes that women’s sports were established. In the 1920s, a woman named Elta Cartwright helped to elevate the place of women’s running in Humboldt County and became the first woman to be on the United States Olympic track team.

​Elta Cartwright was born in Eureka, CA on December 21, 1907. She graduated from Eureka High School in 1924 and moved on to Humboldt State Teacher’s College, as Humboldt State University was known as then, to train to be a teacher. She was known for her speed as a sprinter and, in an interview from the 1980s, mentioned that she had looked at going to school at Stanford, but didn’t because there weren’t adequate running facilities there for someone who wanted to train for the Olympics. Elta won her first national track meet in 1925, along with a 1926 national track meet in Philadelphia. Due to her rising star status, the 1927 national track meet was held at Eureka High School, Elta's home track. This track was made of cinder, earning Elta the nickname "Cinder-Elta".

​Elta’s Coach, Laura Herrion, took racers from Humboldt State to New Jersey to try out for the Olympics in 1926, where she tied for the world record in the 100 meter dash, at 12.6 seconds and made the Olympic team. She was known by many at the time as the greatest woman athlete in America at the time.

​The Olympics in 1928 were held in Amsterdam, and the team had to take a boat across the Atlantic to get there from the east coast. The boat offered little in terms of space for practice, but some running did take place on board during the 5 day voyage. Unfortunately, Elta was seasick and didn’t end up qualifying for the semi-finals. Elta’s coach, although she wasn’t allowed to attend, sent a bouquet of roses to Elta following the conclusion of the race with a note “as in defeat, so in victory.” The coach for the team, according to Elta, favored his own racers on the team and didn’t allow a recovered Elta to race in the relay team, which made it to the semi-finals against Canada.

When she returned to Eureka, Elta received a hero’s welcome, with a decorated train to pick her up and take her from San Francisco to Eureka, and a parade. She quit racing upon returning and became a teacher.

​Elta, while she was still in school, taught for a time in Petrolia. In a recorded interview, Elta mentioned that one of her motivating forces for becoming not only a teacher but a great teacher was from a comment made by her supervisor, a Mr. Finnity, who said that her sisters were better teachers than she would ever be. She spent her career teaching and passed away in 2001.

Elta was inducted into the HSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1959, and was the first woman to be inducted.

​Marketing for the race leaned heavily on racial stereotypes about Native individuals – one advertisement for the race claimed that the race would be “Like a flash-back to the days when red braves sped overland afoot with messages from tribe to tribe will be the scene presented by these genuine tribesmen pressing on almost continuously for from ten to fifteen days to reach their goal.”

​For the Redwood Indian Marathon, 11 individuals signed up, 4 were from the Karuk Tribe, and three of those were brothers: John, Gorhum and Marion Southard. Henry Thomas was the fourth Karuk tribe runner. Organizers wanted to make the men seem “authentically Indian” so they gave them running personas like “Mad Bull” and “Flying Cloud”.  Three runners were brought in from the Zuni tribe in New Mexico and sponsored by different counties in California. Images of five of the runners are shown below:

​The rules were simple- the runners had to make it from San Francisco to Grant’s Pass. Each could have a supply car, and could set their running and resting schedules. While they had the option of staying in hotels along the route, most chose to stay alongside the road. The main rule was that the runners had to stay on the Redwood Highway and could not catch a ride from motor vehicles.

​Along the route, various pranks were pulled, with residents dressing up as runners and passing through towns hours before the actual runners did, causing whole towns to run out in the streets and cheer the “runner”, then being shocked and confused when the actual runners came into town.  This happened at least twice, once in Geyserville and once in Arcata.

​Since long distance communication was unavailable on the more remote parts of the route, the organizers decided that the communication could be done through smoke signals (in sticking with the stereotyped "Native American-esque" theme of the race). There were telegraph lines in towns along the route so those were more frequently used.

​Along the road, towns gave the runners gifts of cash for being the first runner through the town, eggs (in the case of Petaluma, which was known for its egg production at the time), and prunes from Healdsburg.

​It was a long race to say the least. After day 4 of running, it was a five-man race, as most runners had fallen far behind or dropped out due to exhaustion or injury (one was hit on the back with a camera tripod and later had to drop out from injury). John Southard and Henry Thomas were the frontrunners, but eventually Southard pulled ahead and completed the race in 7 days, 12 hours, and 34 minutes. Thomas came in second eight hours after Southard arrived in Grant’s Pass. The third and fourth place runners arrived the next day, and the 5th-7th place runners arrived sometime after 9 days, and their times were not recorded. Four runners dropped out of the race.

Elta Cartwright Articles
https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/ca/elta-cartwright-1.html
https://hsujacks.com/honors/humboldt-state-athletics-hall-of-fame/elta-cartwright/5

Redwood Indian Marathon articles
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/indian_redwood_marathon_redwood_empire_run_/#.XrM-PahKiUk
This article as a day-by day breakdown of the race, and is definitely worth a read!
https://ultrarunninghistory.com/redwood-indian-marathon/

In the decades leading up to and just after the turn of the century, Humboldt County residents and visitors took to the skies in an innovative but also scary way - hot air balloons. As Jim Garrison, Archivist for the Humboldt County Historical Society explains below, ballooning was both a beloved spectator sport and incredibly hazardous for those who participated.

The story, for us, begins in the 1880s. Balloon ascensions had been a fad with growing interest in the United States since the earliest domestic ascents in the 1780s. As time went by the "sport" attracted more and more "eccentrics" and thrill-seekers, willing to risk their lives ascending to the clouds in a hot-air or gas-filled balloon. As exhibitions of men flying in balloons became more commonplace, the audiences began to demand more and more. Soon it wasn't enough for an "aeronaut" to simply ascend to the heavens and back again; they needed to see something more daring, more thrilling, and more dangerous. ​

By the 1880s, performers needed to put on much more elaborate shows. Balloonists, who frequently granted themselves the title “Professor” to add a scientific air of intrigue to their shows, flirted with disaster, performing death-defying acrobatics while suspended on a trapeze, before cutting away from the balloon and parachuting to the ground, often while performing more acrobatics! ​

Humboldt County was no exception when it came to the ballooning craze, and audiences flocked to see the aeronauts perform in communities throughout Humboldt County - Eureka, Samoa, Arcata, Blue Lake, Ferndale, Fortuna, Rohnerville, Loleta, Garberville, and Hupa all advertised balloon ascensions between the 1880s and the 1910s. ​

Hagal next visited Rohnerville on July 30th, 1892, where things did not go quite as smoothly. Hagal filled his hot-air balloon and was just beginning his ascent when members of the crowd saw that the balloon was on fire and shouted, alerting the aeronaut of his peril. Hoping he could climb high enough to safely parachute before the balloon collapsed, Hagal stuck with the balloon hanging on until the last second. Too soon the fire burned through and Hagal was dashed violently to the ground from a height of a hundred feet! The “professor’s” insensible form was collected and taken to his hotel, where it was discovered that he would live to risk his life another day. ​

The balloon soared into the air, forcefully jerking Tapscott off of his feet and into the air. Weston had not anticipated having the weight of two men on this flight, and the balloon failed to achieve sufficient altitude in time to avoid a collision with the alder trees. Tapscott fell from the ropes entangling him, dropping to the ground from a height of some twenty-five feet. Landing on his head, Tapscott sustained brain injuries and a compound fracture of his leg. Weston was dragged by the balloon through the alder trees before falling from his trapeze, and sustained major injuries himself, including fractured ribs and head injuries. Both men died in the hospital later that night. ​

On August 12th of 1899 Earlston made another ascent from Ferndale, followed by one in Fortuna the following afternoon. These jumps apparently went off without a hitch, however, the Ferndale Enterprise speculated after each on how many times the “professor” could go on to press his luck before being killed. ​

Earlston next appears in the local papers on August 23rd of the following year (1900), when it is reported by the Ferndale Enterprise that he had been convicted of vagrancy in Ukiah and sentenced to serve 60 days in jail. This was not the “professor’s” first run-in with the law; in 1897 he had run afoul of the police after running away and eloping with 14-year-old Bulla Minot in Los Angeles. ​

Stay safe out there, everyone, and don't forget to share this with your friends! Special thanks to Jim Garrison at the Humboldt County Historical Society for this riveting and fascinating glimpse into Humboldt County's past! You can learn more about the Historical Society through their website here

A few years ago, before I started working at the museum, I was wandering around Old Town and I stopped by to visit the Clarke Museum. I checked out the Main Hall and went into Nealis Hall, where I was faced with literally hundreds of baskets of all shapes, sizes, and colors. I walked through the exhibits but when I walked out, I felt like how one feels when they are walking through a forest that they aren't familiar with and someone asks them what kind of plants they saw. I once heard a professor somewhere over at HSU refer to a similar feeling as experiencing the "green blur" while driving down the road.

I knew I saw baskets, but the sheer numbers made it hard to comprehend what I had seen. It wasn't until I started working at the Museum and started learning more about the collections that I began to see the things that made not only different types of baskets different from one another, but recognizing individual baskets. I've come to a much greater appreciation and understanding of the baskets through learning more about them and their regional importance. Of course, there's always more to learn about them, their makers, and the context of their creation and use.

So here's a handy basic identification guide for the next time you come in the museum or visit another one of our local museums that has basketry on display. Keep in mind these are general guidelines- weavers definitely do new things with time, inspiration, and the influence of external forces so there are baskets out there that don't fit into the general identification criteria.