Humboldt County Historical Society
The Origin of Mattole Through the Eyes of a Salmon
by Buck Miner
(Review by Stanley "Neb" Roscoe)
It is not necessary to know Buck Miner to enjoy this book - but it helps. How Buck came to write it is another fascinating story, but make no mistake, this easy-going, well written, can't-put-it-down page-turner is a thoroughly researched history of the origin of place names in the Mattole watershed - a tour de force by any standard.
For more than 20 years, Buck has been studying maps, interviewing the oldest residents of the Mattole Valley, and checking records in the county court house, which wasn't all that easy for a blind man. Buck's blindness, caused by a bad gene, came on gradually during his early years, so he had time to see and remember how everything looked in the Mattole Valley and surrounding hills during the late 1920s and the 1930s.
Buck, like others of us who grew up fishing the creeks and climbing the ridges along the Mattole, was curious about the origin of their names and did something about it. As a vehicle for his story, he came up with the idea of following the path of a hen salmon from the mouth of the river to its headwaters in Mendocino County in search of "the perfect gravel, cleanest water, and safest spot to lay her eggs."