Wharfage Account Ledger for Humboldt Bay, Eureka, California, 1868–1873

Eureka, California, 1873. Single 5 ½ x 12 inch ledger book with five small pages of notes and one short letter. Forty-two pages of the ledger filled out with many more blank. Some damage to spine on exterior, otherwise very good to excellent.. Offered here is a wharfage fee account ledger from Eureka, California, with dates between 1868 and 1873. The first Euro-American settlement at what is now Eureka, on the Humboldt Bay, was founded in 1850. It became a hub for bringing supplies to the Trinity, Klamath, and Salmon River mines, both by water and over land, and a major lumber manufacturing town with seven sawmills by 1858.[1] Lumber vessels sent lumber down the Pacific coast as far as Chile. By the 1860s and 70s, Eureka’s main exports were lumber and produce (including pork and seafood) via sailing vessels, and there was also regular steamer service taking people and goods between there and San Francisco. Wharfage would have been paid at the port at Eureka for loading or unloading cargo; the ledger tracks ship names alongside either the names of men who loaded the cargo or the cargo type, quantities, and prices.

[1] Owen Cochran Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, 1850–1875 (California State Historical Association, 1929).