Samoa, California

Coordinates: 40°49′07″N 124°11′11″W / 40.81861°N 124.18639°W / 40.81861; -124.18639
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Samoa (disambiguation).

Samoa
707
GNIS feature IDs1656274; 2628788
U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Samoa, California; U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Samoa, California

Samoa (formerly Brownsville) is a census-designated place[5] in Humboldt County, California.[2] It is located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northwest of Eureka,[6] at an elevation of 23 feet (7 m).[2] Samoa is located in the northern peninsula of Humboldt Bay and is the site of the Samoa Cookhouse, one of the last remaining original, lumber-camp style cookhouses. The name Samoa is used interchangeably with the peninsula it occupies. The population was 258 at the 2010 census.

Etymology

Samoa was given its current name in honor of a contemporary crisis in the Samoan Islands in 1890s. It was assumed that its harbor was similar to the harbor of Pago Pago in American Samoa, and the town was consequentially named Samoa. It was originally known as Brownsville, named for James D.H. Brown, who was the owner of a dairy ranch established in 1859.[7]

History

Rail line ran along the split west of Eureka; 1942
The timber came from the mountains east of Trinidad

Prior to private settlement of the area, the north spit at the entrance to Humboldt Bay was used by a series of federal government projects including the 1851 to 1892

prisoner of war camp for Native Americans captured in the Bald Hills War; the Humboldt Bay Life-Saving Station in 1878; and the stonemason finishing yard and trans-shipment point for foundation stones for the St. George Reef Light from 1883 to 1891 at Paysonville.[8]

The nongovernmental settlement was named Brownsville after James Henry Brown, a dairy farmer who settled his ranch on the present site of Samoa in 1865.

Eureka and Klamath River Railroad was chartered in 1893 to connect the Samoa sawmill and associated worker housing facilities to the city of Arcata and timberlands near the Mad River.[12] The Samoa sawmill was the largest in Humboldt County[11] when purchased by Andrew B. Hammond in 1900.[13] The Samoa post office opened in 1894.[6]

A sash and door factory was added to the mill complex by 1909,[10] and the company was reorganized as the Hammond Lumber Company in 1912.[14] Hammond Lumber Company built an emergency shipyard during World War I, and seven wooden steam-ships were built at Samoa between 1917 and 1919.[15] The 1921-22 Belcher Atlas of Humboldt County breaks down private and commercial land ownership throughout the county, showing that by 1922, the region of Samoa was parceled into an extractive resource industry. The largest tracts of land belonged to Hammond Lumber Company, while other enterprises included the Little River Redwood Company, the San Francisco Land Company, Big Lagoon Lumber Company, and Dolbeer & Carson Lumber Company, the latter owning the northerly marsh inlets stretching between the modern-day Arcata Bottoms and Mad River.[16] Hammond Lumber Company railroads brought logs and lumber to Samoa from Little River and Big Lagoon until the railway trestles were destroyed by wildfire in 1945.

Georgia-Pacific Corporation purchased the Samoa sawmill complex in 1956 and began operation of a plywood mill in 1958.[17] A modern sawmill replaced the original sawmill facilities in 1964.[18] A pulp mill began operation in 1965.[19] Some of the older worker housing was razed during construction of modern mill facilities, but the Samoa Cookhouse was preserved. The Samoa mill complex was transferred to Louisiana-Pacific Corporation during a Federal Trade Commission action initiated in 1972[20] The last old-growth timber was milled in 1980,[18] and the area was set for sale in 2001.

Samoa Peninsula

The coastal bar separating Humboldt Bay from the Pacific Ocean has been breached by a dredged channel to allow commercial shipping to enter the bay. The tips of the north and south jetties have unusual concrete breakers known as

area code 707
.

USS H-3 Beached at Samoa April 6, 1917

The seaward side of the peninsula is Samoa Beach. The great green combers of winter gales hump and crest about a half-mile offshore where the 30 feet (9.1 m) swell curve parallels the shoreline. During such storms, little can be seen between the breakers and the beach except the smoky spume of crests blown off by the wind. Varying currents and a high incidence of foggy days caused mariners to call the approach to Humboldt Bay a "graveyard of the Pacific" in days before modern navigational aids were available. Even when the fog bank was no more than a threat on the horizon, landmarks on the higher ground east of Humboldt Bay were obscured by a low overcast of smoke from lumber mills and homes using wood fuel.[21]

Despite the construction of the Humboldt Harbor Light and the

USS H-3 (SS-30).[24] The submarine had gone aground on December 15, 1916; and its crew were living in tents on the beach.[25] The submarine was later salvaged by the Mercer-Fraser Company building a track of balks across the Samoa peninsula and jacking the submarine up onto rollers to be towed across and relaunched into Humboldt Bay.[26]

Climate

This region experiences warm (but not hot) and dry summers, with no average monthly temperatures above 71.6 °F and cold raining winters that include a fog layer in the mornings. According to the

Köppen Climate Classification system, Samoa has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps.[27]

Demographics

The

Latino
of any race were 52 persons (20.2%).

The Census reported that 258 people (100% of the population) lived in households, 0 (0%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 0 (0%) were institutionalized.

There were 91 households, out of which 28 (30.8%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21 (23.1%) were

families
(51.6% of all households); the average family size was 2.87.

The population was spread out, with 47 people (18.2%) under the age of 18, 59 people (22.9%) aged 18 to 24, 96 people (37.2%) aged 25 to 44, 47 people (18.2%) aged 45 to 64, and 9 people (3.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 126.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 137.1 males.

There were 98 housing units at an average density of 117.2 per square mile (45.3/km2), of which 91 were occupied, of which 1 (1.1%) were owner-occupied, and 90 (98.9%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0%; the rental vacancy rate was 2.2%. 2 people (0.8% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 256 people (99.2%) lived in rental housing units.

Politics

In the

the 2nd Senate District, represented by Democrat Mike McGuire,[29] and the 2nd Assembly District, represented by Democrat Jim Wood.[30]

Federally, it is in California's 2nd congressional district, represented by Democrat Jared Huffman.[31]

Popular culture

In the 1986 movie My Chauffeur a woman named Casey Meadows played by Deborah Foreman has to chauffeur Battle Witherspoon played by Sam J. Jones to Samoa, while on their way the car breaks down.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "2010 Census U.S. Gazetteer Files – Places – California". United States Census Bureau.
  2. ^ a b c U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Samoa, California
  3. ^ "Explore Census Data". data.census.gov. Retrieved May 6, 2023.
  4. ^ USPS ZIP Code lookup tool
  5. ^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Samoa, California
  6. ^
    ISBN 1-884995-14-4
    .
  7. ISBN 9780403093182
    .
  8. ^ U.S. Coast Guard Station Humboldt Bay and Marine Railway, Historic American Buildings Survey CA-2810. Washington, DC: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. February 2009. pp. 39 pages.
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-9629617-1-X
    .
  10. ^ a b Carranco 1982 p.157
  11. ^ a b Carranco 1982 p.145
  12. ^ Carranco 1982 p.117
  13. ^ Carranco 1982 p.99
  14. ^ Carranco 1982 p.159
  15. ^ Carranco 1982 p.100
  16. ^ Belcher Atlas of Humboldt County. Arcata, CA: Humboldt State University Special Collections, Humboldt State University.
  17. ^ Carranco 1982 pp.163-164
  18. ^ a b Carranco 1982 p.164
  19. ^ Carranco 1982 p.101
  20. ^ Carranco 1982 p.166
  21. ^ Haislip, February 1967, pp.35-36
  22. ^ Haislip, February 1967, p.35
  23. ^ Haislip, February 1967, pp.46-48
  24. ^ Haislip, February 1967, pp.45-46
  25. ^ Haislip, February 1967, p.38
  26. ^ Haislip, February 1967, p.49
  27. ^ Climate Summary for Samoa, California
  28. ^ "2010 Census Interactive Population Search: CA - Samoa CDP". U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on July 15, 2014. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  29. ^ "Senators". State of California. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
  30. ^ "Members Assembly". State of California. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
  31. ^ "California's 2nd Congressional District - Representatives & District Map". Civic Impulse, LLC. Retrieved March 1, 2013.

References

Sources

External links

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