114 



room and drive on." \'isitaiion is not helped by the 

 park's lack of facilities. It has no tourist lodging and no 

 drive-in campgrounds. Campsites can be reached only 

 by strenuous backpacking. 



Although Humboldt County tourism has graduallv 

 inched upward and is now the county's fifth-largest in- 

 dustr)', the park is not the primary lure. The big tourist 

 draw is Eureka's restored Old Town and the gingerbread 

 mansions of the timber barons, souvenirs of the conser- 

 vation-be-damned, cut-and-run logging days of a hun- 

 dred years ago. 



Tourism has created a few jobs, but even Jim Owens 



! acknowledges, "It's hard to convince a man who made 

 $15 or $20 an hour in a sawmill that he'll be better off 

 working at Burger King." The average Humboldt County 

 timber worker last year earned $21,300. The average 

 motel employee received 511,500. Even then, most 

 North Coast visitors are budget-minded, outdoors-loving 

 families who camp in the state and county parks or head 

 for the beaches. 



Meanwhile, the area's protracted depression has 

 brought another group of equally thrifty people. At- 

 tracted by the North Coast's spectacular scenery, rural 

 lifest)le, clean air.and-most of all-its rock-bottom hous- 

 ing prices, "equity immigrants" have sold their homes in 

 Southern California's inflated real estate market and mi- 

 grated north, where a four-bedroom house commanding 

 an ocean view may cost less thaa$ 100,000. Some retirees 

 have put down what 7ny>//rfl/^ editor John Pritchett calls 

 "shallow roots." They set up ocean front residence in trail- 

 ers and motor homes dining the cool summers, then flee 

 south again when the four-month rainy season drenches 

 the area with its annual 72 inches of precipitation. 



As if the downturn in the timber industry weren't 

 enough, the two counties have been hurt by a decline in 

 what was once the second-biggest money earner-fishing. 

 "Commercial salmon is all but dead around here, "John 

 Pritchett says. Sport fishing, which used to attract hun- 

 dreds of vacationing fishermen, has declined precipi- 

 tously, too. Offshore salmon are in dramatically short 

 supply, and severe restrictions have been placed on fish- 

 ing. Environmentalists and commercial fishermen say 

 the two problems are interrelated: fish can't get up- 

 stream to spawn because the streams are clogged with 

 logging debris, so their numbers are dwindling. 



