SUE BRATTLE
Tales From California’s Wild West Coast
Crescent City, Del Norte County, California
ONE great thing about road trips is that between highlights and must-sees you come across places you’ve never heard of and never knew you wanted to visit. Crescent City was one of those, surrounded by redwood country and on the way to the Oregon border, the most northern town in California.
We’d crossed the border into Tijuana, Mexico, in the south so of course needed to cross the border into Oregon in the north just for balance and to say we’d driven the length of the Golden State. Road trips get into your head like that.
The first thing you notice as you enter the town on Pacific Highway 101 is how flat it is. No high-rises here and I swear we chose our hotel (now called Best Western Plus Northwoods Inn) because it was three storeys high. It also had a great statue of sea lions at the entrance, and they became the background noise of our stay – first thing in the morning until last thing at night.
Booked into our enormous room, we went out to explore, following the siren call of the sea lions. And there they were, taking in the late afternoon sunshine on a really cold day and flopping and lolloping in an ungainly pile outside the Chart Room seafood restaurant in the busiest real working fishing harbour I’d seen in a long time. That day ended with the best scallop and chips I’ve ever eaten in a packed to heaving Chart Room. An early night was in order, because Crescent City shuts by 9pm.
We stayed here for three nights, taking in the mighty redwoods and exploring the lighthouses – Battery Point and the St George Reef. Gradually the tragic story of this tiny town revealed itself. It’s flat because its geography leaves it vulnerable to tsunamis. So its wide streets, low-level buildings and tsunami warning signs are a reminder of the horrors of March 27, 1964 when a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska rumbled across the Pacific.
Witnessing a Tragedy
Eventually 150-foot waves crashed through the reefs around the town, killing 12 people and causing US$15 million worth of damage. Its best witnesses were the Battery Point lighthouse keepers, trapped and unharmed, unable to do anything except provide detailed and reliable descriptions of what they saw as the tragedy unfolded.
The wild western coastline gives Crescent City, named after the shape of its beach, a beauty that we’d almost grown used to driving up this northern stretch of California. But its treacherous reefs and hidden dangers have also given rise to superstitions, legends and tales of ghostly goings-on. Personally, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. However, the shipwreck of the paddle steamer S.S. Brother Jonathan in 1865 has stayed with me.
We stumbled across the Brother Jonathan Park when we were trying to get a good view of the St George Reef lighthouse. The park is on the edge of town, on the way to the lighthouse, and tells some of the story of the biggest shipwreck this coastline has ever known – only 19 of the 244 passengers and crew survived.
But it was the list of victims that I found so moving; ‘7 ladies of the evening’, un-named, ‘four black seamen’ who saved the 19 survivors, also un-named. Families, children, and much gold went down with the over-laden steamer which made it a magnet for treasure hunters till the wreck was found and the gold was claimed in the 1990s.
From the tragic to the mundane, I went off to an appointment with a local hairdresser.
Break With Tradition
You’ll know that the quest for getting my hair root colour touched up opens me to some great conversations wherever I am and Crescent City didn’t disappoint.
My small talk – ‘So how long have you owned this salon?’ – sparked an unlikely answer. ‘Not long. I was a firefighter till about two years ago.’ Turned out that her father, grandfather and so on were all in the town’s fire service, so she really had no choice. But her heart wasn’t in it and she was brave enough to change careers and follow her own path.
That night I watched the fishermen on the harbour with renewed respect as we planned our quick foray into Oregon the next day and our next stop, a glorious Halloween night in another little gem, the town of Eureka.
Some time later an American colleague, asking me about our California adventure, said: ‘You stopped in Crescent City? What for, there’s nothing there.’ That’s the wonder of road trips, there’s always something ’there’ if you’ve got the time to look.
June 2021
MORE INFO
DEL NORTE COUNTY’S Crescent City page has details of places to stay, eateries, events and more. READ MORE
RELATED
HALLOWEEN SURPRISE: We had the perfect Halloween treat on a US road trip when we chanced upon the spooky Eureka Inn filled with ghosts and ghouls. It certainly cast a spell over us. READ MORE
CHATTING TO A RAPIST’S MUM: An extraordinary conversation unfolded in a hairdresser’s salon in Barstow, California, as we waited for our root colours to cover the grey… READ MORE
GARBERVILLE: America’s cannabis capital, as seen in the Netflix documentary series Murder Mountain, makes for an unusual stopover on a California road trip. READ MORE
CALIFORNIA’S AMAZING WILDLIFE – GALLERY: Whales, elephant seals, elk, sea lions… California has all these and much, much more. But did you know that you can also find zebras grazing on the roadside in one part of the Golden State? READ MORE
RECOMMENDED
WELCOME TO OUR WORLD! Afaranwide’s home page – this is where you can find out about our latest posts and other highlights. READ MORE
TOP 10 VIRTUAL ATTRACTIONS: Many of the world’s most popular tourists sites are closed because of the coronavirus crisis, but you can still visit them virtually while you’re self-isolating. READ MORE
SHIMLA, QUEEN OF THE HILLS: Government officials once retreated to Shimla in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape India’s blazing hot summers. Now tourists make the same journey. READ MORE
TEN THINGS WE LEARNED: Our up-to-the-minute guide to creating a website, one step at a time. The costs, the mistakes – it’s what we wish we’d known when we started blogging. READ MORE
TROUBLED TIMES FOR EXPATS: Moving abroad can seem an idyllic prospect, but what happens when sudden upheavals or the inescapable realities of life intrude? READ MORE
Disclosure: Afaranwide is an affiliate of leading travel operators such as Booking.com, Japan Rail Pass and Global Work & Travel, and the language-learning tool Toucan. If you purchase through our site we receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. We only work with companies we have used and recommend.
LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH!
SUE BRATTLE
Tales From California’s Wild West Coast
Crescent City, Del Norte County, California
ONE great thing about road trips is that between highlights and must-sees you come across places you’ve never heard of and never knew you wanted to visit. Crescent City was one of those, surrounded by redwood country and on the way to the Oregon border, the most northern town in California.
We’d crossed the border into Tijuana, Mexico, in the south so of course needed to cross the border into Oregon in the north just for balance and to say we’d driven the length of the Golden State. Road trips get into your head like that.
The first thing you notice as you enter the town on Pacific Highway 101 is how flat it is. No high-rises here and I swear we chose our hotel (now called Best Western Plus Northwoods Inn) because it was three storeys high. It also had a great statue of sea lions at the entrance, and they became the background noise of our stay – first thing in the morning until last thing at night.
Booked into our enormous room, we went out to explore, following the siren call of the sea lions. And there they were, taking in the late afternoon sunshine on a really cold day and flopping and lolloping in an ungainly pile outside the Chart Room seafood restaurant in the busiest real working fishing harbour I’d seen in a long time. That day ended with the best scallop and chips I’ve ever eaten in a packed to heaving Chart Room. An early night was in order, because Crescent City shuts by 9pm.
We stayed here for three nights, taking in the mighty redwoods and exploring the lighthouses – Battery Point and the St George Reef. Gradually the tragic story of this tiny town revealed itself. It’s flat because its geography leaves it vulnerable to tsunamis. So its wide streets, low-level buildings and tsunami warning signs are a reminder of the horrors of March 27, 1964 when a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska rumbled across the Pacific.
Witnessing a Tragedy
Eventually 150-foot waves crashed through the reefs around the town, killing 12 people and causing US$15 million worth of damage. Its best witnesses were the Battery Point lighthouse keepers, trapped and unharmed, unable to do anything except provide detailed and reliable descriptions of what they saw as the tragedy unfolded.
The wild western coastline gives Crescent City, named after the shape of its beach, a beauty that we’d almost grown used to driving up this northern stretch of California. But its treacherous reefs and hidden dangers have also given rise to superstitions, legends and tales of ghostly goings-on. Personally, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. However, the shipwreck of the paddle steamer S.S. Brother Jonathan in 1865 has stayed with me.
We stumbled across the Brother Jonathan Park when we were trying to get a good view of the St George Reef lighthouse. The park is on the edge of town, on the way to the lighthouse, and tells some of the story of the biggest shipwreck this coastline has ever known – only 19 of the 244 passengers and crew survived.
But it was the list of victims that I found so moving; ‘7 ladies of the evening’, un-named, ‘four black seamen’ who saved the 19 survivors, also un-named. Families, children, and much gold went down with the over-laden steamer which made it a magnet for treasure hunters till the wreck was found and the gold was claimed in the 1990s.
From the tragic to the mundane, I went off to an appointment with a local hairdresser.
Break With Tradition
You’ll know that the quest for getting my hair root colour touched up opens me to some great conversations wherever I am and Crescent City didn’t disappoint.
My small talk – ‘So how long have you owned this salon?’ – sparked an unlikely answer. ‘Not long. I was a firefighter till about two years ago.’ Turned out that her father, grandfather and so on were all in the town’s fire service, so she really had no choice. But her heart wasn’t in it and she was brave enough to change careers and follow her own path.
That night I watched the fishermen on the harbour with renewed respect as we planned our quick foray into Oregon the next day and our next stop, a glorious Halloween night in another little gem, the town of Eureka.
Some time later an American colleague, asking me about our California adventure, said: ‘You stopped in Crescent City? What for, there’s nothing there.’ That’s the wonder of road trips, there’s always something ’there’ if you’ve got the time to look.
June 2021
MORE INFO
DEL NORTE COUNTY’S Crescent City page has details of places to stay, eateries, events and more. READ MORE
RELATED
HALLOWEEN SURPRISE: We had the perfect Halloween treat on a US road trip when we chanced upon the spooky Eureka Inn filled with ghosts and ghouls. It certainly cast a spell over us. READ MORE
CHATTING TO A RAPIST’S MUM: An extraordinary conversation unfolded in a hairdresser’s salon in Barstow, California, as we waited for our root colours to cover the grey… READ MORE
GARBERVILLE: America’s cannabis capital, as seen in the Netflix documentary series Murder Mountain, makes for an unusual stopover on a California road trip. READ MORE
CALIFORNIA’S AMAZING WILDLIFE – GALLERY: Whales, elephant seals, elk, sea lions… California has all these and much, much more. But did you know that you can also find zebras grazing on the roadside in one part of the Golden State? READ MORE
RECOMMENDED
WELCOME TO OUR WORLD! Afaranwide’s home page – this is where you can find out about our latest posts and other highlights. READ MORE
TOP 10 VIRTUAL ATTRACTIONS: Many of the world’s most popular tourists sites are closed because of the coronavirus crisis, but you can still visit them virtually while you’re self-isolating. READ MORE
SHIMLA, QUEEN OF THE HILLS: Government officials once retreated to Shimla in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape India’s blazing hot summers. Now tourists make the same journey. READ MORE
TEN THINGS WE LEARNED: Our up-to-the-minute guide to creating a website, one step at a time. The costs, the mistakes – it’s what we wish we’d known when we started blogging. READ MORE
TROUBLED TIMES FOR EXPATS: Moving abroad can seem an idyllic prospect, but what happens when sudden upheavals or the inescapable realities of life intrude? READ MORE
Disclosure: Afaranwide is an affiliate of leading travel operators such as Booking.com, Japan Rail Pass and Global Work & Travel, and the language-learning tool Toucan. If you purchase through our site we receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. We only work with companies we have used and recommend.
LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH!
Crescent City? What Do You Want To Go There For?
Tales From California’s Wild West Coast
SUE BRATTLE
Crescent City, Del Norte County, California
ONE great thing about road trips is that between highlights and must-sees you come across places you’ve never heard of and never knew you wanted to visit. Crescent City was one of those, surrounded by redwood country and on the way to the Oregon border, the most northern town in California.
We’d crossed the border into Tijuana, Mexico, in the south so of course needed to cross the border into Oregon in the north just for balance and to say we’d driven the length of the Golden State. Road trips get into your head like that.
The first thing you notice as you enter the town on Pacific Highway 101 is how flat it is. No high-rises here and I swear we chose our hotel (now called Best Western Plus Northwoods Inn) because it was three storeys high. It also had a great statue of sea lions at the entrance, and they became the background noise of our stay – first thing in the morning until last thing at night.
Booked into our enormous room, we went out to explore, following the siren call of the sea lions. And there they were, taking in the late afternoon sunshine on a really cold day and flopping and lolloping in an ungainly pile outside the Chart Room seafood restaurant in the busiest real working fishing harbour I’d seen in a long time. That day ended with the best scallop and chips I’ve ever eaten in a packed to heaving Chart Room. An early night was in order, because Crescent City shuts by 9pm.
We stayed here for three nights, taking in the mighty redwoods and exploring the lighthouses – Battery Point and the St George Reef. Gradually the tragic story of this tiny town revealed itself. It’s flat because its geography leaves it vulnerable to tsunamis. So its wide streets, low-level buildings and tsunami warning signs are a reminder of the horrors of March 27, 1964 when a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska rumbled across the Pacific.
Witnessing a Tragedy
Eventually 150-foot waves crashed through the reefs around the town, killing 12 people and causing US$15 million worth of damage. Its best witnesses were the Battery Point lighthouse keepers, trapped and unharmed, unable to do anything except provide detailed and reliable descriptions of what they saw as the tragedy unfolded.
The wild western coastline gives Crescent City, named after the shape of its beach, a beauty that we’d almost grown used to driving up this northern stretch of California. But its treacherous reefs and hidden dangers have also given rise to superstitions, legends and tales of ghostly goings-on. Personally, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. However, the shipwreck of the paddle steamer S.S. Brother Jonathan in 1865 has stayed with me.
We stumbled across the Brother Jonathan Park when we were trying to get a good view of the St George Reef lighthouse. The park is on the edge of town, on the way to the lighthouse, and tells some of the story of the biggest shipwreck this coastline has ever known – only 19 of the 244 passengers and crew survived.
But it was the list of victims that I found so moving; ‘7 ladies of the evening’, un-named, ‘four black seamen’ who saved the 19 survivors, also un-named. Families, children, and much gold went down with the over-laden steamer which made it a magnet for treasure hunters till the wreck was found and the gold was claimed in the 1990s.
From the tragic to the mundane, I went off to an appointment with a local hairdresser.
Break With Tradition
You’ll know that the quest for getting my hair root colour touched up opens me to some great conversations wherever I am and Crescent City didn’t disappoint.
My small talk – ‘So how long have you owned this salon?’ – sparked an unlikely answer. ‘Not long. I was a firefighter till about two years ago.’ Turned out that her father, grandfather and so on were all in the town’s fire service, so she really had no choice. But her heart wasn’t in it and she was brave enough to change careers and follow her own path.
That night I watched the fishermen on the harbour with renewed respect as we planned our quick foray into Oregon the next day and our next stop, a glorious Halloween night in another little gem, the town of Eureka.
Some time later an American colleague, asking me about our California adventure, said: ‘You stopped in Crescent City? What for, there’s nothing there.’ That’s the wonder of road trips, there’s always something ’there’ if you’ve got the time to look.
June 2021
MORE INFO
DEL NORTE COUNTY’S Crescent City page has details of places to stay, eateries, events and more. READ MORE
RELATED
HALLOWEEN SURPRISE: We had the perfect Halloween treat on a US road trip when we chanced upon the spooky Eureka Inn filled with ghosts and ghouls. It certainly cast a spell over us. READ MORE
CHATTING TO A RAPIST’S MUM: An extraordinary conversation unfolded in a hairdresser’s salon in Barstow, California, as we waited for our root colours to cover the grey… READ MORE
GARBERVILLE: America’s cannabis capital, as seen in the Netflix documentary series Murder Mountain, makes for an unusual stopover on a California road trip. READ MORE
CALIFORNIA’S AMAZING WILDLIFE – GALLERY: Whales, elephant seals, elk, sea lions… California has all these and much, much more. But did you know that you can also find zebras grazing on the roadside in one part of the Golden State? READ MORE
RECOMMENDED
WELCOME TO OUR WORLD! Afaranwide’s home page – this is where you can find out about our latest posts and other highlights. READ MORE
TOP 10 VIRTUAL ATTRACTIONS: Many of the world’s most popular tourists sites are closed because of the coronavirus crisis, but you can still visit them virtually while you’re self-isolating. READ MORE
SHIMLA, QUEEN OF THE HILLS: Government officials once retreated to Shimla in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape India’s blazing hot summers. Now tourists make the same journey. READ MORE
TEN THINGS WE LEARNED: Our up-to-the-minute guide to creating a website, one step at a time. The costs, the mistakes – it’s what we wish we’d known when we started blogging. READ MORE
TROUBLED TIMES FOR EXPATS: Moving abroad can seem an idyllic prospect, but what happens when sudden upheavals or the inescapable realities of life intrude? READ MORE
Disclosure: Afaranwide is an affiliate of leading travel operators such as Booking.com, Japan Rail Pass and Global Work & Travel, and the language-learning tool Toucan. If you purchase through our site we receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. We only work with companies we have used and recommend.