The Clarke is listed as on the National Register of Historic Places, meaning that it has been found to be a significant cultural or architectural landmark. The Clarke earned that designation due to its special architectural design, done by Albert Pissis, who was a San Francisco architect who helped to rebuild San Francisco after the  1906 earthquake. The exterior of the building is glazed terracotta tile, an unusual material that in Eureka appears exclusively on the Bank of Eureka building. 

Pissis designed and built the Bank of Eureka building at a time when neo-classical architecture was popular. Architects drew on design motifs from Greek and Roman architecture including columns, leaf designs, and cadeuces, and worked to emulate the detailed decor of Grecian and Roman architecture. That included marble flooring and incredibly detailed ceiling work on the interior of the building. Thanks to a building restoration expert Lisa Jarrow, we discovered that all that detailed work was once covered in gold leaf, which was a time consuming process with spectacular results.

The building was lit by a combination of lighting fixtures over its operational days as a bank, from chandeliers and wall sconces to fluorescent lighting. The 6 chandeliers were cast bronze with spherical shades, which were updated to Art Deco style shades.

Being a NRHP listed location, it's part of our duty as building owners and stewards of history to maintain this building's historical integrity for the future, while also ensuring that building remains useful and relevant to our community. Restoring our lighting gets us a step closer to emulating the historic grandeur of the building, while wiring the chandeliers and overhead lighting for energy efficiency helps us serve our community by lessening our energy usage footprint. The new lighting allows for flexibility in how the space is used, by providing more light when needed and less when it isn't and the return of the chandeliers encourage visitors to look up where all the detailed design work is. With this project and our ongoing paint restoration project, we're doing our part to maintain this landmark of local and national significance. 

Since the Symposium came to a close, I've been focusing on getting the Weapons Vault up and running. Working with community members who know more about historic firearms has been a real joy, and has sparked my curiosity in the role they've played (and continued to play) in our regional and national history. I'm still compiling my thoughts on all that as there is a LOT there, but I wanted to share a bit of information on one particular style of gun that shows up in our weapons vault that I thought was particularly interesting through how it was adapted to fit challenges met in the West.

 In the double barrel shotgun case, you’ll see a gun that is noticeably shorter than the others. This is known as a “messenger gun”. In the 1850s, San Francisco was beginning to be a booming metropolis, being the leading port for new miners coming to California from around the world. At the time, the fastest way across the massive expanse of land was by horse or stagecoach.  

 Wells-Fargo stages traveling to San Francisco from Tipton, Missouri carried passengers, US Mail, and of course gold and paper money to their bank branches in California. Because of this, the well-labeled stages became common targets for robbers in the lawless west. In response, Wells Fargo started sending armed guards with the stagecoaches to protect the money, mail, and passengers over the 2800 mile route. The armed guard had a sturdy, short barrel (12 to 20 inches long) shotgun called a messenger gun and would sit up front in the driver’s box next to the driver, a spot oftentimes referred to as “shotgun” (The term “shotgun” used to refer to the front passenger seat of a car, however, didn’t become popular until the late 1910s and into the “Spagetti Western” era of films in the 1960s, where guards and their guns would oftentimes show up in epic chase scenes). The Messenger guns were typically loaded with buckshot and, when used at a relatively close range, were very effective with little aiming needed, which was good when sitting on a stage coach moving quickly over rough terrain.

Whiskey in the Wall opened at Arts Alive in September with great enthusiasm from those who came out to the opening. We spent a good chunk of September setting it up, which included printing and sticking 8 inch by 11 inch sticky labels onto foam core then individually cutting them out to make the timeline cards around the exhibit. Time intensive, but so worth it! We also held a special curator-led tour of the exhibit which was a big hit.

Our attendance numbers this year topped last years and we added California State Parks to the list of groups that hosts a table at the event.  Flintknapping, as always, was a big hit. Thanks to Humboldt State's Anthropology Club for coming out with fun activities!

At the very beginning of November, we co-hosted the Humboldt History Symposium at the Wharfinger Building with the Humboldt County Historical Society. Tickets sold out and the house was packed. We featured 9 speakers, with Ray Raphael as the Keynote and had representation by a majority of our regions historical organizations in attendance. It was great catching up with other local history professionals and hobbyists, and there are already calls for another Symposium in November of 2020.

I had set the goal of opening the historic Weapons Vault in December, which meant that as soon as the Symposium was over, it was time to dig into moving stuff and putting guns in displays. Thanks to Volunteer Christina, who has been coming in weekly since January 2019 (if not earlier than that) to help with the big move, Volunteer Dean who provided a lot of helpful information on how to display the guns, and staff members Ben and Brittany for doing a lot of the facilities type work to prepare the room with a fresh coat of paint and new cases, the exhibit is ready to open to the public this Saturday, December 7, for Arts Alive. But wait, there's more!
December's Arts Alive will also feature a variety of home brewers and local distilleries who will be offering tastings of their brews in the Prohibition exhibit space, which features an authentic homemade still on loan from the North Coast Redwoods District of the California State Parks.

Throughout the last few months, Museum Director Ben Brown has tracked down the original Bank of Eureka chandeliers to be restored and re-hung as part of our ongoing interior restoration project. Additionally, Lisa Jarrow who came out earlier this year to start restoring the interior paint came back out and did a bit more work on the back wall of the museum. It's looking spectacular, just like it did in 1911! Katie and Ben co-authored an article on this ongoing project, which will be in the Spring 2020 edition of the Humboldt Historian.

An interesting side note is that hair wreaths were not exclusively made for mourning however. Some wreaths were made to commemorate happy times, such as weddings and the growth of families or social groups like churches. One of the watch fobs on display here was made by a sister for a brother who was traveling to America from Norway.

On August 3, 1908, Ferdon arrived in Eureka with pomp and circumstance in brightly painted horse drawn wagons. He set up what sounds like a circus tent at 4th and I Streets and an office in the Weck building at 311 F Street and the following day held a parade traveling around town with a band called the Great Diamond Cluster Band for a few hours before ending at the circus tent for the main event. An estimated 10,000 people came out to Fer-Don’s act, which began with him throwing silver dollars into the crowd. The main act was Fer-Don discussing his staff of European medical professionals at the Weck Office healing of members of the audience. Ferdon told reporters that he kept files on the people who were treated to prove his work wasn’t a fraud, oftentimes referencing specific people from the community as proof of his truthful work. He said he also published the names and addresses of people who were healed by his practice so people could investigate for themselves. In September, Ferdon left Eureka and headed south to Santa Rosa.

Jeff Elliot of I See by the Papers a blog on the history of Sonoma County, claims “Santa Rosa had never seen a scam artist like James M. Ferdon”. From how Fer-Don’s show was described in Eureka, that claim seems a bit excessive. Elliot elaborates on his claim- part of Ferdon’s scam was that he would advertise in the papers using legitimate looking newspaper articles embedded with the regular news (at the time, ads were located on the back page or lower half of the newspapers rather than mixed in with articles). The realistic articles could easily trick readers and added a new dimension of slight of hand to Ferdon’s con. It’s very likely that Ferdon ran articles like these locally while he was in Eureka. Some papers refused to run the article-advertisements, and it was oftentimes these papers that would investigate Ferdon, discover his costly ‘treatments’ (which sometimes cost more than a person might make in a month at the time) were more magic tricks than anything else, and eventually run him out of town. Ferdon addressed the people who ran him out of town with this statement: "[E]nmity always follows success, and there is always a certain class of humanity ready to cry 'humbug,' 'fake,' and 'quack,' but such howlers and defamers of honest characters are very seldom successful in any line of business because they do not attend to their own. They are too busy sticking their noses into the affairs of others."  

Ferdon was issued a warrant for his arrest, in Washington after spending time running his con there and went underground before reviving the con a few months later. He was later fined in Sacramento, bailed out by his wife, and disappeared to shapeshift into another con. His later namesakes included “The Great Lavita” which was an identical con to “Great Fer-Don” and “the Great Pizaro” selling cactus juice and “great Catarrh Remedy” of Borax and salts. He was later jailed at a federal penitentiary for his medical scams and died in 1944.

Edgar Laponte, later known as Chief White Elk, was born in Rhode Island. He started his con work early like Ferdon did, at age 14 walking around town asking other businesses to donate and help save another business that was in need. He was caught by the police and sent to boarding school in hopes of straightening out the boy- it didn’t work. His next gig was when he was in his 20s dressing up as a Native American at Coney Island to attract attention to an attraction.  

In this persona, he was a movie star, war hero, singer, speaker of 21 languages and dressed in a Plains buckskin, including a war bonnet made of “eagle” (turkey) feathers. He traveled around raising money for War Bonds to support the ongoing War, and appears at a fundraiser at Holmes Flat in Southern Humboldt on July 4, 1917, as documented by a photo donated to the Humboldt County Historical Society by Velma Childs Titus in 2017. Next to the “Chief”, there is a short woman whom he later married. Emma Freeman took photos of the duo among the redwoods in Humboldt County, and these photos appear in the Clarke collections.

In his disguise, Laponte married Bertha Thompson, daughter of Lucy Thompson of the Klamath tribe and author of “To the American Indian”. The extravagant wedding took place in 1918 at the Capitol in Salt Lake City with full military honors, an attendance of 5,000 people, 31 piece band and 10 bridesmaids. It didn’t last, as Laponte was an alcoholic and cocaine user, and, depending on who you ask, Bertha left or Laponte abandoned her. It wasn't until years later that Bertha hired an attorney to learn more about the Chief's Cherokee ancestry- and learned that he was a conman.

I’ve lived in Humboldt County for about 5 years and in that time, I’ve come to appreciate how many festivals happen throughout the summer- and how that festival season is growing longer and longer each year. Festivals run deep in Humboldt County’s history, and if there’s one that’s been a continual hit over that 150+ year history, it’s 4th of July. It’s been celebrated differently over the years depending on many factors including ease of transportation into the area, size of the population, and what was happening in the larger United States.

After the Civil War ended, 4th of July celebrations became more festive again. Games like tug-o-war between teams of loggers took place at Sequoia and New Era parks. Firemen would race pull carts with hoses on them, concerts were held, and a variety of performances were held by local and traveling performers. One performance consisted of a man on a tightrope passing between the roof of the Humboldt County Bank at second and G (where the Black Faun gallery is now) to the Vance Hotel. Another popular performance was of a man who filled a balloon with hot air through a pipe over a fire, ascended into the sky, then parachuted down. In one performance, a dog parachuted down as well on its own parachute and survived the landing, but the performance was claimed to be inhumane to the poor dog, so it wasn’t repeated in Eureka.  

 In 1917, Bonds and Mortgages magazine from Chicago, Illinois, mentions that “The Eureka, California division of the Western States Gas & Electric Company [which was later purchased by what became Pacific Gas and Electric] has completed laying its 11,000 volt cable across Humboldt Bay to supply electricity to shipyards and other industries in that district. The shipyards are exceptionally active not, and eight keels for new boats have recently been laid. Two new bank buildings are being erected in Eureka”

​Another style of photography was the stereogram which was announced in 1851. It was a surface that held two slightly different images side by side, and when inserted in the stereoscope, the viewer would see the two 2D images become one 3D image. This photography style continued into modern times, and today the most popular example is the View-Master.