The role of any historical society is to explore and preserve the history of its region. Every year, it seems, our society welcomes new books on Humboldt's history into its research library and to sell at its bookstore.  We are also pleased to have there many classics in the field, books that have been around long enough to have a history of their own.

       One such is The Humboldt Bay Region, 1850 - 1875 by Owen C. Coy.  It was first published in 1929, close enough to the county's founding for the author to have consulted the memories and the records of our earliest settlers.  Then in 1947, the Humboldt County Historical Society was founded because it was realized that our past was fast slipping away, requiring an on-going effort to explore and preserve it for the future.  One of the HCHS's first projects was to preserve and reprint copies of Coy's by-then rare volumes.

       Today it remains one of the best summations of early Humboldt life and history.  Beginning with the early explorations along our coast, it moves to the "Rediscovery of the Bay", early settlement and farming, the founding of the timber and ship building industries, and what came to be known as the Indian Wars. Then as some settlements became towns, establishing a social and political life, we see how the effects of the inland gold rush were replaced by the coastal oil boom and how the community responded to differences over the Civil War.  By 1875, the year that this book's coverage ended, we see how Humboldt had been fully incorporated into American life and ready to launch itself the years lying ahead.

       Today, nearly a century after the original publication, Coy's book remains one of the foundation stones of Humboldt's historical writing.  In many ways it goes into fuller detail  than later books that have been built upon its scholarship.  For true Humboldt historians, amateur or professional, it is a must-have for one's bookshelf.