Trinidad, Humboldt County of Northern California, 1924 USED/VINTAGE
Trinidad, Humboldt County of Northern California, 1924 USED/VINTAGE
On the special sales shelves at the Historical Society bookstore, are several copies of a booklet that is itself a piece of history. In 1924, the Eureka/Trinidad Chamber of Commerce published Trinidad Humboldt County in Northern California, the Best Part of the State. It captures a time and an attitude that are very much part of the past.
These vintage copies are in fair overall condition, with fragile, damaged covers. We keep them in archival folders to limit further damage. The inside pages are clean and in good condition.
Basically this is real estate investment promotion, based on the over-confident speculation that Trinidad was about to become a transport and commercial hub due to railroad construction plans that never came to pass. The promoters are urging its 1924 readers to get in on the ground floor and acquire homes where "the climatic and soil conditions are without rival, where water is abundant, and where the grass is green the whole year through, and where a Terminal City will on this harbor join transcontinental traffic to the transpacific ocean carriers."
It is amusing from a century in their future to look back on these confident promoters. The shock is enhanced by the decorative use of a symbol, once a Buddhist and Native American sign for good luck, that to us reads as a Nazi swastika. But the beauty of the included photographs of the scenic Trinidad area are not sullied by the passage of time. For that, we current readers and admirers of today's Trinidad can be very grateful. We can appreciate this booklet as a fragment of history, a snapshot of attitudes that have diminished into historic comedy, but which shows us what the passage of time has saved us from.
