Bricks And Rust
by Mitch Shindelbower
Title
Bricks And Rust
Artist
Mitch Shindelbower
Medium
Photograph
Description
European settlement began in the early 1850s although Wiyot people had inhabited the area for generations. Potato farming was the biggest agricultural use of land until the 1870s, when depleted soil and declining prices caused a turn to dairying. The town was originally known as Swauger or Swauger's Station, for local landowner Samuel A. Swauger.[5]
The town was renamed Loleta in 1897. The name was reported to mean "pleasant place at the end of the tide water" in the language of the original Wiyot native inhabitants,[7] although this is apparently contradicted linguistically[7] as well as by a hearsay account from the 1950s,[8] made notorious by a National Geographic blog post.[9] However, a 1918 list of place names collected by Kroeber and Waterman two years after Kroeber's 1916 publication[7] shows that the trail from Table Bluff along the peak of that feature was named "lalōekā".[10]
The Eel River and Eureka Railroad reached Swauger's Station from Humboldt Bay in 1883.[5] The Swauger post office opened in 1888, and changed its name to Loleta in 1898.[5] The Humboldt Creamery plant (originally Diamond Springs Creamery, eventually a co-operative of the Golden State Creamery)[11] opened in the town proper in 1893, and dairying continues to be a major economic influence. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reorganized Loleta's railroad as the San Francisco and Northwestern Railway in 1903 and then completed the Northwestern Pacific Railroad to San Francisco in 1914.[12]
Uploaded
August 15th, 2017
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