Grandpa Bill had a ritual he looked forward to every Sunday morning. He would take my sisters out for a drive for some bonding time. On one particular Sunday, however, Grandpa had a bad cold.. Luckily, Grandma Leola came to the rescue and said that she would take the girls out. Upon their return, Marcy…

The Northcoast has proved unkind for seagoing vessels plying the waters west of Crescent City. A number of vessels were wrecked or stranded along the coast, including Amanda Alger, who went ashore at the Gold Bluffs in December 1871; Centennial, who stranded crossing the Klamath Bar in April 1877; and seven other craft, including California,…

Morgan G. Tucker was born Dec. 28, 1822. He was proprietor of the Crescent City Hotel in 1854. He was also one of the jurors in the trial of the three Indians accused of murdering A. French. He was friends with Nicholas Tack Sr. When the Tack family arrived in Crescent City Morgan met Nicholas’…

The first white settlers of Del Norte County had contact with the world only through a scant trail system and the ships that stopped here. Although it was a more primitive system than available to travelers now, the number of roads was not so many more than those of modern times. The first trails were…

Nicholas Tack enjoyed the distinction of being the oldest Mason in the county. At the time of his death at 91, he was also the oldest man in Del Norte County. Family history says that a member of the House of Teck in Germany killed an officer of the German Army during a dispute and…

James Brooking became one of Del Norte County’s pioneers because of his reaction to receiving a pick and a pan as his pay from an irate sea captain. History writer Esther Ruth Smith does not explain in her book, “Del Norte County Pioneers,” why a pick and a pan was his pay. But Brooking, son…

Thomas Johnson Turner Berry was one of Del Norte’s early pioneers, who brought his last name here from Howard County, Iowa. Born in December 1858, he moved to California 20 years later, as the escort of the family of doctor who had set up his practice. According to “Del Norte County Pioneers,” published by Esther Ruth…

You can’t blow out someone else’s candle and expect yours to shine brighter.

Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller once called Crescent City home – for a couple nights at least. He was just one patron of many who stayed overnight in some of Crescent City’s earliest hotels. The first hotel, the ‘Cushing House,’ was built in 1853, the very first year the city was founded. It was on…

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer’s’ invention, so large shipments of manure were common. It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became…