History of Humboldt County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 43

Author: Irvine, Leigh H. (Leigh Hadley), 1863-1942
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Los Angeles, Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1328

USA > California > Humboldt County > History of Humboldt County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 43

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direction. He had acquired a considerable interest in the road, which he was able to sell at good advantage. In 1877 he organized the firm of W. G. Press & Co., Stock Exchange brokers, of Chicago, which has had a continuous ex- istence since, being now the oldest house of the kind doing business on the Chicago Board of Trade, noted for paying one hundred per cent on the dollar on demand. Its reputation is typical of the kind of business Mr. Press has always been instrumental in promoting. He is progressive to a degree, but conservative in his operations, placing his capital to the best advantage, even when results have to be awaited patiently, rather than risking his own money or that intrusted to him in enterprises with hazy or uncertain pros- pects. He still remains at the head of the house of W. G. Press & Co., which has offices downtown and at the Union Stock Yards.

Real estate has always appealed to Mr. Press for permanent investment, as his immense holdings in Chicago indicate. All told he built and owns seven hundred and fourteen feet of four-story stone buildings in that city, on the south side, including the Press apartments at the corner of Sixty- second street and University avenue. All human interests have their attrac- tions for him, and thus he has diversified his own life and work and taken advantage of his own strong position to assist and encourage others. It is said he has furnished and published more market reports than any other man living. It was he who furnished the data for the plot of "The Specu- lator," written by George Broadhurst and played by Roland Reed, and Mr. Press blocked out the play and financed its production to show his faith in the playwright, who had once been a clerk in his Chicago office. Mr. Broad- hurst has since successfully produced "What Happened to Jones," "Why Smith Left Home," "The Last Chapter," "The Man of the Hour," and other notable dramas of modern life.

The causes for Mr. Press's interest in the climate of Humboldt county had their beginning in 1876, when he was prostrated with the heat while at the Centennial in Philadelphia. In 1896, when out west inspecting his gold mining property near Prescott, Ariz., on the Hassayampa river twelve miles from that city, he became overheated and suffered from sunstroke a little later, at Colorado Springs, Colo., when the temperature reached one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. For several months his life was despaired of. In 1898 he had another attack, at the Board of Trade in Chicago, and another in 1899. Since then he has been unable to endure the summers east of the mountains, and he spends the months of June, July and August in Eureka, Humboldt county, Cal., whose climate can hardly be rivaled for equability, the mean temperature being fifty-five degrees. For twenty-five years there were only two days when the temperature rose above seventy- five, and the lowest record in winter has been thirty degrees. The first summer Mr. Press spent there he was obliged to remain in a dark room all the time, but he is now able to enjoy the delightful days which prevail throughout the season. His active mind soon sought the interesting features of the place, and in 1902 he became interested in the lumber industry. He now owns about one hundred million feet of standing timber, and other prop- erty acquired in connection with the development of his timber holdings, a shingle mill and six hundred feet of water front and wharf at Eureka. Nat- urally the development of the same has created considerable activity in indus- trial conditions in the vicinity. Mr. Press investigated thoroughly the claims

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made for the durability and other desirable qualities of redwood shingles and then decided to go into their manufacture. The shingle mill of the Whiting G. Press Company has a capacity of three hundred thousand shingles per day, and the product has a wide reputation, based on the tests of time which redwood shingles have endured. Probably the most notable example cited is the building once one of the group belonging to the old military post at Eureka, established about 1852 for protection from the Indians. The building, passed into private ownership but still standing on its original site, is probably typical of the dozen or

so which constituted the old station. It has been neglected and mutilated, but the redwood shingles with which it was covered over sixty years ago are still there and in excellent condition. General Grant, then a lieutenant, was stationed here in 1853. Instances of redwood shingles in first-class shape after forty years of service are common enough in this region, and on the strength of these facts the Whiting G. Press Company has sold its shingles with a guarantee for the buyer's lifetime in perfect safety. Mr. Press is president of the company ; Gillman C. Knapp, secretary ; M. E. Wrigley, manager. The very interesting little article which accompanies their product to the consumer presents some facts of general interest and statistics which cannot but appeal to anyone who has ever heard of the famous redwood forest.

This growth is contained in an area of perhaps two thousand square miles, lying close along the shores of the Pacific between the Oregon line and the bay of San Francisco, about three hundred miles, with a varying breadth of from six to twenty miles. It is over two thousand years old, and its exploitation presented problems in the way of lumbering, as well as com- mercial operations, unknown because unnecessary in any other region. Unlike any other timber on the earth, it is adaptable to almost every requirement or use to which wood is put. As a forest tree, it is practically indestructible by fire. Almost every home and barn and fence on the western slope of Cali- fornia has been constructed of this valuable material, and when the unin- itiated visitor shows wonder as he begins to realize the size attained by these botanical giants he will likely hear of the pioneer who built his house and barns and fenced his claim with lumber from one tree. In the outlying groves, on the edge of the strip, the trees are comparatively small, and fortunately the early demand for timber was easily met by mere trimmings from the edge, leaving the heart of the forest for the present generation, which has profited by the wasteful methods practiced some years ago by lumbermen in other woods and is conserving with foresight and cutting dis- criminately. The sight of a fallen tree trunk which a man cannot climb, of the felling of one immense tree, is enough to set the stranger thinking. In the midst of a number of large specimens he is likely to underestimate their size, until convinced by the indisputable facts of actual measurement. Again, the symmetry of the trees, beautiful from the nature lover's standpoint, is equally welcomed by the lumberman, for there is little waste when the growth is so perfect. Here is another stupendous fact. In the timber regions of the southern and western states, according to authorities, five thousand feet, board measure, is the average yield per acre; when it reaches as high as ten thousand feet to the acre the land is called heavily timbered. The same authorities estimated the average on a tract of redwood (one hundred and thirty-seven thousand acres) at forty-four thousand feet, and on one portion

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of ninety-six thousand acres in Humboldt county claimed eighty-four thousand feet as a fair average! Many an acre contains ten or twelve trees ranging from six to twelve feet or more in diameter and from two hundred to three hundred feet in height, good timber to the very top. The region around Humboldt bay, being most convenient, was lumbered over first, but over sixty years ago operations were begun in Humboldt county. The first shipment of redwood from Humboldt bay was made in 1854 by William Carson. Of late years all the redwood timber has come from this section.

Fortunately the earliest operators had no adequate idea of the value of redwood, or of the vast supply, or they might have cut as recklessly as the first comers in other lumber regions have done, and with as mischievous results. It is only within comparatively recent years that the manufacture of shingles from redwood has become an established industry, and a com- paratively few men have devoted their mills exclusively to this product, with the most gratifying results. The Press Company prides itself on owning the largest and most complete redwood shingle mill in existence, and its methods of manufacture have reached a degree of perfection which should assure an unrivaled product. The bolts from which the shingles are made are taken from newly cut timber, fresh and sound. The shingles are dried before shipping, for the saving in freight expenses as well as the evenness attained in the scientific process, so that there is no danger of warping. The durability of redwood is no doubt attributable in large measure to the slow growth; and it is a question whether the long life of the trees may be due to the lack of variation in temperature which prevails in the redwood belt-only forty- five degrees, the thermometer having ranged between thirty and seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit for twenty-five years during which records have been kept, with only two days which were above seventy-five and two or three when it was below thirty.

The business of the Press Company has had a steady growth. Its ac- quired timber lands have sufficient lumber for a generation of manufacturing.

Mr. Press belongs to the generation which has done big things for the country, and in his transactions he has had the privilege of coming into direct contact with many of the figures foremost in these operations, financiers, captains of industry, capitalists and politicians, particularly in Chicago, where his business headquarters have been maintained.

CHARLES A. JOHNSTON .- The exploitation of the oil fields in the vicinity of Petrolia, Humboldt county, was begun as far back as 1865, and although not much progress has been made it would seem that the situation is due more to the difficulty of finding a satisfactory method of obtaining the oil rather than to the scarcity of the product. Charles A. Johnston has lived in that section since 1869, owns quite an extensive tract of oil-bearing land, and is probably the best informed man on local conditions of the kind that has ever lived at Petrolia. He has faith in the ultimate value of the fields as adequate processes of extracting the oil are devised, but meantime he is working all the lines of practical profit which have already been proved feasible in this region, and his success with commercial apple and walnut orchards has done much to encourage the culture of those two crops in the lower Mattole valley. All his work as an agriculturist has been carried on in the most progressive manner, but it is as a horticulturist, particularly as

C. a. Johnston

Evaline Johnston

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an orchardist, that he has done most for his locality and probably for himself. To some extent he is also engaged in stock raising.

Mr. Johnston was born in Jones county, Iowa, not far from the present site of Des Moines, April 16, 1849. His parents, Charles B. and Catharine (Smith) Johnston, were natives of Ohio, in which state they married. The father was a frontiersman all his life. Moving with his family from Ohio to the vicinity of Galena, Ill., they went farther west from there, into Iowa and Missouri, back again to Iowa, and thence over the plains to California in 1852. Charles B. Johnston was personally acquainted with Abraham Lincoln as well as other notable characters of the middle west. Fortu- nately, in the pioneer days of Iowa, he had befriended Black Hawk, the Indian chief, on several occasions and they were friends. But when the Black Hawk war broke out he enlisted, and, knowing the country, served as a scout and spy. During the war he was captured and owed his life to Black Hawk, who aided him to escape by furnishing him a horse. His experiences qualified him thoroughly to lead his party across the plains, and he was chosen captain of the ox team train. Happily they had only one small skirmish with the Indians en route, on the Platte river, and drew up safely at LaPorte, near Gibsonville, in Sierra county. There the John- ston family first settled, Mr. Johnston engaging in mining at that location for six years, and for one year he was at the Cabbage Patch, in Yuba county, where he mined and kept hotel. Thence they moved to the Prairie diggings near Brown's Valley, Yuba county, remaining there until 1863, after which for several years they were on a nearby ranch, which he operated. In 1868 Charles B. Johnston came to the Mattole, and took up one hundred and sixty acres of land at Upper Mattole, where most of his remaining days were passed. His death occurred at Petrolia in 1885, when he was seventy-five years old. His widow died there in 1902, at the age of eighty-five years. Nine children were born to them, only three of whom now survive, William, the eldest son, having been accidentally killed in July, 1914; he was an employe at the Anaconda mine. Cava Ann is the widow of Jacob Miner, and lives at Petrolia. Samuel S., of National City, San Diego county, Cal., was formerly postmaster there.

Charles A. Johnston was but three years old when the family crossed the plains to this state. As the localities in which his youth was spent were sparsely settled, and pioneers were still too busy with the immediate business of gaining a living to establish community affairs on a proper basis, he had very meager school advantages, but he has educated himself by reading and self-study and thus has become a well informed man, besides having plenty of experience of a practical kind. He rode after stock on the ranges, did teaming between Petrolia and Centerville for two years, and eventually became interested in agricultural pursuits, to which he devotes most of his time at present. His land holdings comprise three ranches, his home place known as Walnut Drive Farm of three hundred acres, the Seaside Ranch of eighty acres at the mouth of Mattole river, and the Buckeye Ranch of seventeen hundred twenty acres five miles east . of his home place. As previously mentioned, he has gone quite extensively into the culture of walnuts and has also raised some prime apples. Mr. . Johnston is a Progressive Republican, but has never been an aspirant to public office.

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In 1872 Mr. Johnston was married to Miss Sarah Clark, daughter of Charles Clark, a Petrolia pioneer, and she died leaving two children: Will- iam, now in Alaska, who married Carrie Giacomini, of Petrolia, and has two children ; and Addie L., wife of Rev. Ernest Grigg, a Methodist Episcopal minister of Arcata, and mother of three children. On June 29, 1879, Mr. Johnston married the second time by the Rev. Parkhurst at Upper Mattole, being united with Miss Evaline Langdon, daughter of Joseph Avery and Phoebe Jane (Andrews) Langdon, the former a native of New York state, the latter of Iowa; they were married in Michigan. Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Langdon before they crossed the plains to California in 1853. The father had come out before, in 1851, returned for his family, and established the home at Table Bluff, Humboldt county, for a time, in 1857 removing down to the Mattole valley, where he owned the Buckeye stock range. He died at Wadsworth, Nev., in 1876, the mother in Petrolia in 1880. Mrs. Johnston is a native daughter of Mattole, born near the pres- ent site of Petrolia, and was the third white child born in the valley, where she was reared and educated in the public schools. Seven children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Johnston: Sarah Ellen is the wife of Fred McKee, a shipper, of Needle Rock, Mendocino county, and they have one child, Doris E .; Phoebe L. is married to James Lawson, a carpenter of Petrolia, and has two children, Leland L. and Clyde N .; Minnie L. is the wife of Horace H. Stewart, who lives at Petrolia and is associated with Thomas A. Johnston in running the father's stock ranch, and they have one child, Charles Calvin; Thomas Avery is running the stock ranch in part- nership with Mr. Stewart; Katie E. has been teaching for seven years in the Honey Dew district school at Upper Mattole: Charles F. is woods superintendent at Needle Rock; Ethel E. is living at home.

Mr. Johnston is a member of Mattole Lodge No. 92, K. P., at Petrolia, of which he is past chancellor. He and his wife are attendants at the Meth- odist Episcopal Church at Petrolia, he being a member of the board of trustees. They are enterprising and liberal and carry out the old California spirit of hospitality. They seem ever ready to aid those who have been less fortunate than themselves and give freely of their time and means to aid movements of benefit to the community and its people. Mr. Johnston is a lover of fine horses and has raised some fine specimens of standard horses. Of late years, however, he has discontinued breeding them and is giving his time to horticulture.

Mr. Johnston has kept in close touch with the oil prospects at Petrolia. There are seepages on the Buckeye ranch. All the oil wells bored have contained gas. Wells were first dug in this field in 1865. Many were sunk to a depth of one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, but only three yielded oil in any quantity. The Doe well, about one mile west of Petrolia, was followed down two thousand feet, but yielded nothing, not even gas or water. J. W. Henderson sunk the first well on Joel Flat, called the Hen- derson well, went down five hundred feet, and thought he had a ten-barrel well. Between fifty and seventy-five barrels were packed out, and on the assumption that the well would continue flowing he went to the city to get a tank to store the oil in. By the time he returned the well had caved in, and nothing more was ever done with it. The second well, on the Edmonstone ranch, about six miles up the north fork of the Mattole, was

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also five hundred feet deep and yielded the same quantity of oil, most of it being obtained at ninety feet; it is a gasser. The third well was in the McNutt gulch, and oil was struck at three hundred feet; it gushed water, oil and gas, flowed one day and was capped, but soon caved in, and as it was owned by local men no further effort was made to develop it. A fourth well, the Buckeye, showed considerable oil. A fifth, the Brown & Knowles, was sunk in 1865 and yielded oil at one hundred and fifty feet, and oil stands in that well to this day.

Operations ceased thereafter until 1891, in which year the Far West Oil Company dug a well on the Buckeye. They went down eight hundred feet, at five hundred feet finding a lot of oil, but when the tools were lost they abandoned that well and moved over to Davis creek. Again they sunk an eight-hundred-foot well and obtained a considerable quantity of oil, but the hard times of 1893 caused a cessation of interest for the time. In 1901 other companies came into the field, a Mr. McIntosh sinking the first well attempted that year, on the Zanona land. He went down fifteen hundred feet and claimed to have a fifteen-barrel well. The next was the Wild Goose well, sunk in 1901-02, ten hundred three feet deep. Oil was struck first at two hundred twenty-one feet, and the stratum was sixty feet wide. At five hundred and fifty-five feet there was a flow of gas strong enough to throw the tools out of the well ; two hundred feet below quite a big flow of oil was found, and at ten hundred three feet they lost the tools, which were fished for a month without success. This was without doubt about a fifteen-barrel well, and is still flowing gas. The next work was done by a Mr. Craig, who put down two wells up the north fork, the first, seven hundred feet in depth, yielding some gas but no oil; the second, eight hun- dred feet deep, had a considerable flow. The Weed well on the north fork, four hundred feet deep, flowed gas but no oil, and the Humboldt well, on Buckeye creek, went nineteen hundred feet deep with no oil to speak of. Then a well was tried at Upper Mattole, the Hoagland well on E. J. Etter's ranch, sunk to a depth of seventeen hundred feet; it produced fairly well. Mr. Johnston has a large acquaintance among the prominent oil men of the east, as well as in California, many of whom have investigated this territory and have been enthusiastic. Unfortunately, long time leases have been held by inactive people so the live men could get no foothold. Mr. Johnston is optimistic for the future of the Mattole country, his faith being unshaken that some day it will be a profitable and active oil field.

PETER RATTI was born in 1880, near Lucca, Italy, where he was reared and received his education in the public schools. He followed farm work in his native land until 1903, when he came to the United States and located in Eureka, Cal. Here he was employed in the woods for the Scotia Lumber Company, Vance Lumber Company and others until he quit to enter the employ of the Diamond Fruit Company as a clerk, and afterwards was with the Italian-French restaurant until he saw an opportunity to engage in business for himself. In 1913 he bought from Mr. Massei the grocery and fruit store on the corner of Fifth and F streets, and here he has continued in business. Under the name of the Humboldt Fruit Company he has built up a large trade in groceries, fruits and vegetables, using an auto delivery in his business.

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Fraternally Mr. Ratti is a member of the Druids and Moose, and politi- cally is a Republican.

FRANCIS R. HOREL, M. D .- Skill in therapeutics and exceptional ability as a diagnostician have gained for Dr. Horel the confidence of his patients in all classes. Nor is his professional usefulness limited to Arcata, his home town, for he is called into service in other parts of Humboldt county and now acts as a director on the medical staff of the Sequoia hospital at Eureka. While he is a man of splendid business qualifications, keen in judg- ment and capable of placing a correct valuation upon property of all kinds, and while he has been connected with large enterprises, notably the Thomas Devlin Tanning Company of Arcata (in which he is vice-president and a director), it is nevertheless as a physician and surgeon that his best qualities are exemplified and that his highest usefulness has been manifested. Endowed with tenderness and sympathy hidden beneath the customary reserve of the professional man, his presence brings cheer to the discouraged and hope to the suffering, and his kindly, helpful and skilled ministrations have made his presence a blessing in many a home.

The Horel family, of English ancestry, was founded in America by Samuel Horel, who left England at twenty-one years of age and settled on a tract of raw land in Wisconsin. At the time of his death he was forty-six years of age. Among the children of his union with Sarah J. Roberts was a son, Francis R., born on the Wisconsin farm at Waukesha, February 28, 1851, and reared to a life of the most arduous labor in the midst of surround- ings that still indicated the frontier. Through his own determined and am- bitious efforts he secured an education, working his way through the uni- versity at Galesville, Wis., and later earning the money with which to defray his expenses in medical college. He is a graduate of the renowned Rush Medical College, Chicago, one of the greatest schools of its kind in the world, and is a member of the class of 1885. For six years he practiced in St. Paul, Neb., after which he spent a short time as house physician of the Nebraska state insane asylum at Hastings.

Since he embarked in practice at Arcata in 1901 Dr. Horel has become widely known throughout this section of country, where his professional abili- ties receive the recognition that is their just due. Meantime he has aided movements for the commercial upbuilding of the locality. Not the least im- portant of his efforts is that, in connection with others, of reclaiming the tide marsh lands near Arcata which will be suitable for manufacturing sites. Among his investments are redwood tracts in this part of the state as well as a comfortable home in Arcata. Through his marriage in 1878 to Lois E. O'Brien he became the father of three children, J. Earl, Ruth F. and Lois A. . His fraternities and societies are numerous and include Arcata Lodge No. 106, F. & A. M .; Humboldt Chapter No. 52, R. A. M .; and Eureka Commandery No. 35, K. T., both in Eureka ; Islam Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., of San Fran- cisco, and Oakland Consistory No. 2. He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and with his wife is a member of the Order of the Eastern Star. He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. In the line of his profession he is a member of the Ameri- can, State and County Medical Associations, as well as the Pacific Coast Association of Railway Surgeons. He is local surgeon for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad.

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History of Humboldt County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 43

Author: Irvine, Leigh H. (Leigh Hadley), 1863-1942 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Los Angeles, Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1328

Author: Irvine, Leigh H. (Leigh Hadley), 1863-1942
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Los Angeles, Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1328