Humboldt County is linked by coastal Highway 101 to the rest of California to the South and the Oregon Coast to the North. Highway 299 links the County to Interstate 5 to the east. The county airport in McKinleyville has daily flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle.
During the past 20 years, the county has experienced a large number of job losses in the timber industry due to numerous factors including spotted owl habitat, tougher environmental regulations and fewer trees in private ownership. The commercial fishing industry has also been going through a downsizing due to tougher environmental regulations brought on by a reduction in the population of commercial fish species, most notably salmon.
During that same period of time, the county has seen an increase in the number of tourists and an expansion of tourist-related businesses and services has ensued. Humbolt County is home to 10 State Parks and some of the most diverse natural resources on the West Coast. The county is also home to the Redwood National and State Parks, which have been designated as a United Nations Biosphere Region and World Heritage Site. The World Wildlife Fund has identified the county as part of one of the most diverse eco-regions left on the planet and named it to its Global 200 list.
In a very real sense, the history of the Redwood Coast is tied to the redwood tree, which even today figures strongly in the region's culture and politics. Humboldt County is an area of moderate temperatures and considerable precipitation. Temperatures along the coast vary only 10 degrees from summer to winter, although a greater range is found over inland areas. Temperatures of 32 degrees or lower are experienced nearly every winter throughout the area, and colder temperatures are common in the interior. Maximum readings for the year often do not exceed 80 on the coast, while 100 degree plus readings occur frequently in the mountain valleys.
Humboldt County's first human inhabitants were the Karok people who settled over 2,000 years ago. Other peoples followed over the centuries, but the dense, nearly impenetrable redwood forests kept them fairly isolated from the outside world. The redwoods sheltered the game they hunted and furnished the material for plank houses and large, sturdy canoes - the latter hollowed out of a single tree (and not a particularly big tree at that).
The first Europeans to visit the Redwood Coast included Spanish explorers and Russian fur traders, but it wasn't until 1848 that Humboldt Bay was "discovered" and the first towns established. The original settlements at Eureka and Union (now Arcata) were created for the purpose of supplying the Trinity gold mines, some 100 miles inland from the coast. But as was typical in California's Gold Rush, it wasn't the miners who really struck it rich.