Humboldt County Historical Society
Heydays in Humboldt
by Ken Roscoe
Illustrated by Viola Russ McBride
Aided by the beautifully authentic drawings of Viola Russ McBride, the late Ken Roscoe reveals a magical land as it was in the first half of the 20th century complete with cowboys, rattlesnakes, bears, sheep dogs, country baseball, elections, funerals, religion and love.
The preface introduces readers to the Roscoe and Dudley families, who came to the Mattole Valley in the 1870s where they reared their children and grandchildren. The Roscoe family, led by Ken's grandfather Wesley Horton Roscoe, the wagonmaster, had come west from Iowa in 1861 and 1862. The Roscoes first settled in Marysville then, attracted by stories of the wonderful Mattole Valley, packed up with other settlers and came to that beautiful area and started farming and ranching.
The maternal side of Ken's family, the Dudleys, also came from Iowa and settled in the Mattole Valley, where they set up milling operations, one at the mouth of Upper Mill Creek southeast of Petrolia and a second at the mouth of Squaw Creek near the present Mattole Grange.
There are stories about encounters with bears, rattlesnakes, cougars, goats, turkeys, milk cows and early automobiles. And there are colorful individuals, such as Jim O'Dell, Tom Boots, George Osborne, Bill Thrap, Will Roscoe, Fred and Clarissa Weinsdorfer, Calamity Jane, Grover Gardner, Syd Miller, Clark Rackliff, Stan Roscoe, Danny Gannaw, Dan McGuire, Man Alive Johnson and Gibbs the Scot- once more to name only a few - who travel through the pages, showing the individualism as well as the independence of these Humboldt characters.