​World War II left its mark in Humboldt County in a few different ways. A number of community members served in the war, and many are memorialized in our special exhibition at the Airport. Items from many locals who served can be found in the Clarke collections, from photos to uniforms. Local buildings were even affected, with Founders Hall at HSU being painted in camouflage to the bunkers in Samoa and other structures. Some of those structures are within the present-day Redwood National and State Parks, most notably the Klamath River Radar Site B-71. Rather than being painted green, brown and black, the site used a different type of camouflage to conceal its real purpose.

​Another mark is located further north, in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Known as the largest WWII memorial in the US, the National Tribute grove is a 5,000 acre grove dedicated in memory of those who died in WWII and was started by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who invested $3,000 of the $26,000 needed to purchase the grove for preservation. The Garden Club of America pitched in to help raise money and the effort was led by Save the Redwoods League, who had spearheaded the memorial grove movement. The project began in 1946 and the names of the donors and people honored by the grove were recorded in a “Golden Book” in the National Archives. The grove was officially dedicated by Newton B Drury on September 25, 1949, who stated that the grove would be a “memorial of eternal gratitude, eternally expressed”. For a time, the exact location of the grove marker had been lost in foliage due to lack of access to the site, but in 2014, the marker was found and moved to a popular day use area near the grove to ensure that the memorial would be easily accessible. 

This incredible chainsaw, with a 6 foot bar, was used to cut old growth redwoods in the forests of Humboldt County. It is on loan to the museum during our exhibit from Timber Heritage Association, an organization that is building a world-class collection of logging tools, machinery, and more in Samoa. They're locally known for their Speeder Car rides that run all around the county in the summertime.

When I first started scouting items to borrow for the exhibit, this poster appeared in the Redwood National and State Parks Archives. With it's scowling face and furrowed eyebrows with bold text, I thought it would make a great presentation piece in the exhibit. This photo is a reprint of the original. The Parks Archives loaned us many of the high-impact pieces on display, including the standing map displaying the expansion of the Park, the Clean Logged and Seeded sign in the pro-logging propaganda case, the vibrant photos taken by Don Anthrop throughout the exhibit, and the burls on display in the center of the exhibit. 

This case contains a number of personal items from Lucille Vinyard, whom many call the mother of Redwood National Park. Items related to her work to establish the parks can be found at Humboldt State University or online here.
This case offered interns at Humboldt State the opportunity to apply skills from their ongoing internship, sponsored by the National Parks Service, in bringing archives into the public eye. 

This tool was used to map out the expansion of the Redwood National Park in the 1970s and 1980s. it uses aerial photos, mirrors, and magnifying glasses connected to a movable frame to allow the user to trace out the terrain onto a separate map.

These types of tools were used to create what later became base maps for GIS and GPS, and for programs like Google Maps.

This record, according to the tag included with it, was made by Mr. B. H. Shuemaker, a local from Eureka who had perfected the process of making pieces of redwood into playable records. One side has a story of the history of the redwoods while the opposite side plays Beautiful Dreamer. The record was created in the early 1940s.