useless for commercial purposes. But a great empire had been opened and
an enormously serviceable harbor had been added to California's assets.
It aided mining and created immense lumber interests.


Strange as it may seem, Humboldt Bay was not discovered at this time.
Some years ago a searcher of the archives of far-off St. Petersburg
found unquestionable proof that the discovery was made in 1806, and not
in 1849-50. Early in the nineteenth century the Russian-American Company
was all-powerful and especially active in the fur trade. It engaged an
American captain, Jonathan Winship, who commanded an American crew on
the ship "Ocean." The outfit, accompanied by a hundred Aleut Indians,
with fifty-two small boats, was sent from Alaska down the California
coast in pursuit of seals. They anchored at Trinidad and spread out for
the capture of sea-otter. Eighteen miles south they sighted a bay and
finally found the obscure entrance. They entered with a boat and then
followed with the ship, which anchored nearly opposite the location of
Eureka. They found fifteen feet of water on the bar. From the large
number of Indians living on its shores, they called it the Bay of the
Indians. The entrance they named Resanof. Winship made a detailed sketch
of the bay and its surroundings, locating the Indian villages and the
small streams that enter the bay. It was sent to St. Petersburg and
entered on a Russian map. The Spaniards seem never to have known
anything of it, and the Americans evidently considered the incident of
no importance.

Humboldt as a community developed slowly. For five years its real
resources were neglected.

[Illustration: HUMBOLDT BAY--FROM RUSSIAN ATLAS THE HIDDEN