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What went into the development of the towns of Sunny Brae, King Salmon, and Fields Landing? Find out when historian Jerry Rohde presents “The Humboldt Bay Area, 1946-1955: A Decade of Development and Destruction” at the Humboldt County Historical Society program meeting on Saturday, Dec. 6, at 1:30 p.m. in the first-floor conference room of the Humboldt County Library, 1313 Third St., Eureka. Admission is free and everyone is invited.

Utilizing a PowerPoint presentation of Merle Schuster’s aerial photographs, Rohde will take us clockwise around the Bay, showing locations where noteworthy developments were occurring during the decade immediately following World War II. At this time the Humboldt County lumber industry saw a tremendous boom due to the national postwar housing market explosion, and many new mills were established throughout Humboldt County to process the timber.

The housing boom came to Humboldt County as well, and Rohde will show slides documenting, with a progression of images, the development of Sunny Brae.

Rohde will also show changes which affected the physical configuration of the Bay itself during these years. For example, King Salmon was constructed in 1940 by dredging. The

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town site was literally created from mud that was once the town of Humboldt City, Humboldt’s first settlement founded by Buhne and others who arrived on the Laura Virginia in 1850. A born-again town, it now became the fishing resort of King Salmon.

Another significant physical change occurred with the extension of Fields Landing. Rohde will present before and after photos showing how a significant portion of shoreline was added at the north end of town.

”A constant motif throughout the slides will be the string of mills that were developed or expanded during these years,” says Rohde. “The era saw many jewels added to the necklace of lumber mills that encircled Humboldt Bay.”

As a bonus, Rohde will include a number of photos of the Eureka waterfront, including one that explains why the recently-destroyed Buhne warehouse was built as a parallelogram. Another bonus slide shows the onetime most-dangerous intersection of Humboldt County.

Join Jerry Rohde for an historical tour around Humboldt Bay. For more information, contact the Humboldt County Historical Society at 445-4342, or visit www.humboldthistory.org.