Editing Eureka, California (section)

===Lumber industry===
[[File:Mill yard across the bay from Eureka.jpg|left|thumb|Mill yard across the bay from Eureka]]Eureka's first post office opened in 1853<ref name="CGN">{{California's Geographic Names|57}}</ref> just as the town began to carve its [[grid plan]] into the edge of a forest it would ultimately consume to feed the building of San Francisco and points beyond. Many of the first immigrants who arrived as prospectors were also lumbermen, and the vast potential for industry on the bay was soon realized, especially as many hopeful gold miners realized the difficulty and infrequency of striking it rich in the mines. By 1854, after only four years since the founding, seven of nine mills processing timber into marketable lumber on Humboldt Bay were within Eureka.<ref name="Coy"/> A year later, 140 lumber schooners operated in and out of Humboldt Bay moving lumber from the mills to booming cities along the Pacific coast.<ref name="Coy"/> By the time the charter for Eureka was granted in 1856, busy mills inside the city had a daily production capacity of 220,000 board feet.<ref name="Fishing Profile">{{cite web  | author1 = Pomeroy, Caroline  | author2 = Thomson, Cynthia J.  | author3 = Stevens, Melissa M.  | title = Eureka Fishing Community Profile  | work = California’s North Coast Fishing Communities Historical Perspective and Recent Trends  | publisher = UC San Diego  | date = August 2010  | url = http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/BOOKSTORE/documents/Eureka.pdf  | access-date = May 17, 2013 | archive-date = February 2, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140202160718/http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/BOOKSTORE/documents/Eureka.pdf  | url-status = dead  }}</ref> This level of production, which would grow significantly and continue for more than a century, secured Eureka as the "timber capital" of California. Eureka was at the apex of rapid growth of the lumber industry because of its location between huge [[Sequoia sempervirens|coast redwood]] forests and its control of the primary port facilities. Loggers brought the enormous redwood trees down. Dozens of movable narrow gauge railroads brought trainloads of logs and finished lumber products to the main rail line, which led directly to Eureka's wharf and waiting schooners. By the 1880s, railroads eventually brought the production of hundreds of mills throughout the region to Eureka, primarily for shipment through its port. After the early 1900s, shipment of products occurred by trucks, trains, and ships from Eureka, Humboldt Bay, and other points in the region, but Eureka remained the busy center of all this activity for over 120 years. These factors and others made Eureka a significant city in early California state history.{{Citation needed|reason=reliable source needed for the whole section which is long on "facts" and short on citations.|date=October 2014}}