​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.

It crosses my mind about once a week how it would be absolutely great to go on a road trip. Gas is cheap, the weather is getting nicer - and then I remember that there's a pandemic and we all need to stay home to get this thing over with. So this week, I went through the archives and looked for some things relating to the World's Fair and Humboldt County's presence in three of them. Humboldt County made a showing in these fairs to help promote tourism and travel to the region as travel became easier, safer, and faster.

​The World’s Fair, now oftentimes referred to as World Expo, is commonly said to have started in 1851, when the United Kingdom hosted “The Great Exhibition” which showed off the manufacturing prowess of the United Kingdom at the time. People from across the country and around the world came to this and future expositions to learn about new advancements, different cultures (although oftentimes the cultural exhibits were racially biased and skewed), and new places. Humboldt County shows up in at least three Expositions: The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (also known as the Columbian Exposition), the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.

​The fair opened May 1, 1893 and closed October 30, 1893 and took place at Jackson Park on the shores of Lake Michigan. Each state had its own building that housed exhibits- California’s was a 3 story Mission-style building that was the second largest in the fair after Illinois. The State sent 156 train car loads to Chicago to fill the display. Like all of the buildings built for this exposition and many buildings in other expositions, the buildings were made to be temporary. For the Humboldt County exhibit, the organizers got $5500 from the Board of Supervisors and local businesses, which totals to about $155,000 in today’s money. County residents Frank A Wick and John Dolbeer of Steam Donkey fame, nominated fellow resident Martha Herrick to lead the exhibit setup.

​Herrick was born December 11, 1841 in South Bend, Indiana. Family history traces her lineage back to a Brigadier-General who helped George Washington sign treaties with local tribes. Martha went to St. Mary’s College. She arrived in California in 18589 via Panama to visit a sick brother and married Rufus F. Herrick in San Jose the following year. Her husband worked with local native people. According to Leigh Irvine, who wrote a biography on Herrick along with dozens of other notable Humboldt County Citizens in 1915, Mrs. Herrick and her husband “together... did much for the red men, treating them with kindness and consideration, protecting their rights and at all times according them justice and fair treatment” and were given the “most of the wonderful collection of Indian relics”. 

​Mrs. Herrick was well known for her knowledge on local tribes and according to Irvine,

​“ received gold and silver medals from the Anthropological Societies of the United States and England for her knowledge of the lost arts of the Indians. She is the author of a treatise on the habits and customs of the Indians of Humboldt county (extracts from which were published in the Ethnological Bureau of Smithsonian Institution), which is recognized as an authority on Indian sanitation. Another work along this line is now being compiled by her, its publication being eagerly awaited by those interested in Indian lore, Mrs. Herrick being recognized as the best authority on the history of the Indians in the Humboldt district, as well as on the general county history.”

​With those kinds of accolades, it’s no surprise that Dolbeer and Wick picked out Herrick to run the Humboldt County exhibit, as items from local Native people were popular display pieces at the time due to the prevailing assumption that local native cultures were on the cusp of disappearing completely across the country. Humboldt County of course was a hard place to travel to and these expositions provided a glimpse (granted a biased one towards the settler perspective) into the culture and lifestyles of the area.

​Herrick took up the job and with a full time assistant and part time assistant, constructed an exhibit in a 1300 foot space representing Humboldt County. Herrick wasn’t the only Humboldt County resident representing at the fair – A.W. Ericson was the fair’s official photographer.

​The exhibit brought the Humboldt county ‘wilderness’ to the Chicago fair, filling the space with taxidermied animals, ferns and other living local plants, rocks, native artifacts and displays of foods from the area, including “vegetables of unusual size”. Herrick was also able to secure one of Seth Kinman’s presidential Elk Antler chairs, whalebone chair, and Kinman’s famous mule skull fiddle. Herrick received an award for her exhibit and remained in Chicago through the duration of the fair leading tours and giving lectures.

​At the end of the fair, the money raised in the county had run out before Herrick had a chance to get her return ticket home, so she had to sell some of her collections she had brought with her to raise enough money. Some of the baskets sold because the base of the collection at the Field Museum. Herrick attempted to be reimbursed by the county for the money she had to spend to get back to Humboldt County, but the Supervisors denied her the money.

​In 1915, the World's Fair was hosted in San Francisco, under the title of the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The fair was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal and an opportunity for San Francisco to share their recovery from the devastating 1906 earthquake. 

​Humboldt County participated in a few different ways-

• There was a “Humboldt County Day” celebrating Humboldt County residents who descended on the fair en masse.
• Humboldt County also had an exhibit which included the redwood log that later became the Stump House and the Lentell Map which is now on display at the Clarke.
• A local Yurok  woman trained as a nurse in San Francisco led the parade the opening day of the Exposition. Her name was Bertha Thompson and the article discussing her, penned by Emma Freeman, made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

​The Humboldt County display contained images from Emma Freeman’s California Indian portrait series (which can be most easily found in Peter Palmquist’s With Natures Children), items representing Humboldt County’s incredibly diverse and plentiful agricultural industry, and images of the redwood forests. Souvenir books and pamphlets were also produced for these fairs lauding the natural, cultural, and industrial features of the area.

The following photos are glimpses into some of the booklets of images sold at the Exposition- cameras were not common features of the tourist outfit yet, so people purchased books, programs, and postcards to share views of the exposition with their friends and families back home. Click on the photos to view larger versions!

A promotional video for the World's Fair