Falk

            Today the name Falk rings bells with Humboldters who enjoy the outdoors. Road signs and tourist brochures point to it as a site along the Elk River trail leading to the Headwaters Forest Reserve – a trail dotted with interpretive signs. What they are interpreting is an important but often forgotten part of Humboldt County history.

            Noah Falk, at age 18, was swept to California from Ohio as part of the Gold Rush. He soon found that the “red gold” of lumber was more reliable and began working in lumber mills, first in Mendocino and by 1867 for William Carson’s company here. A few years later he was co-owner with Isaac Minor of two lumber mills in Arcata.

            As the more easily transported lumber near the Bay was exhausted, lumbering activities moved inland. In the 1880s, Falk joined with a couple of San Francisco investors acquiring land on the south fork of the Elk River and formed the Elk River Mill and Lumber Company. Noah Falk brought his two brothers out from Ohio – Elijah to design and build the mill and Jonas to manage it.

            In 1884, the town of Falk was officially formed – one of many company towns appearing around Humboldt County. Before the advent of automobile commuting, workers had to live near their work places. The company provided housing, food, and community for workers putting in ten-hour work days for, initially, the princely sum of 25 cents a day. The town offered a general store, a post office, a dance hall, two cook houses, dorms for unmarried workers and modest houses for families. Nearby, a school and Congregational church served Falk residents.

            Ox teams and later steam “donkeys” brought the timber to the mills, and then the river and a dedicated railroad took the products to the Bay for shipping around the world. One of Falk’s most prosperous times was after the 1906 earthquake when huge amounts of lumber were needed to rebuild San Francisco. When not in his town itself, Noah Falk and family lived in a grand mansion in Arcata on the great viewpoint site where Wildberries now stands.

            The residents of Falk came from many states and European countries. A particular effort had been made to attract experienced lumber workers from Scandinavian countries. Falk became a tight-knit, multi-lingual community. Reminiscences of generally happy lives there can be found in several books.

            The community changed with the advent of the automobile as workers could then commute from outside places such as Eureka. With the crushing impact of the Depression on the timber industry, the town of Falk and its mills officially closed in the 1930s, though some residents stayed on for a few years more. The forest eventually returned, and Falk became a crumbling ghost town visited only by young adventurers and relic hunters. In 1979, the remains were demolished.

            Today, the Bureau of Land Management’s interpretive center in the old roundhouse building and its plaques along the walking trail are all that remains of once lively town of Falk, but information about its past and all aspects of local history remain available to everyone at the Humboldt County Historical Society.