#166 Went north from Leggett drive thru tree then towards Scotia Ca and stayed at Crescent city

We were traveling on Highway 101 N up the west coast and find ourselves in Crescent City California. I found our little spot to boondock on freecampsites.net

41.773128, -124.243672

I think it will do the trick for two nights. If we don't get in trouble or run-off. No signs are saying no overnight parking so that's a pretty good indication it'll be okay. There are places to camp around but they don't have this view and they aren't free.

I made this cake for Savannah yesterday for her birthday but I got to tell you, let's be careful about calling it cake. We’ll call it a baked item. I mixed up the ingredients in a metal mixing bowl and out of practicality I just baked it in the same mixing bowl. I guess that wouldn't be the most normal thing to do. It seemed to take forever to get done and then it didn't exactly come out of the pan very nicely. I took cake parts and made them look like they were in a circle and glued them together with chocolate pudding between each layer. The whole thing seemed fragile for room temp icing. I put the little Betty Crocker tub of chocolate icing in the microwave and got it liquid and just poured it all over it.

Again, let's not insult by calling it a cake, but if you can get past how it looks it tasted great.

Crescent City turned out to be a very interesting two nights.

There was a boondock further down the road and I saw some young people in a school bus right on the beach. In a way, it was just a little weird and didn't have the best view. On the way there we passed by a rather large parking area the suited me better.

It is a large parking area for people to go down enjoy the shoreline and to me, it all comes down to Common Sense. If I am not offending anyone if it's not busy enough to where people need my spot then I'm not hurting anyone. If it had been a weekend or if people could not have park because of me I think I would have been a problem.

Everything just fell together to where I wasn't bothering anybody so nobody minded.

Just up the hill from us were some rather expensive-looking houses. The kind that is million dollars apiece so I'm sure they didn't care for us being there.

Back to the mantra, you can do almost anything for one night or two but don't stay too long.

We went to two interesting places in Crescent City. One was a museum that housed an enormous Lighthouse Lens and I will enjoyed that.

This is from their website

1st Order Fresnel Lens, the original, 1892

Lighthouse completed St. George Reef Lighthouse. 1909

The spectacular St. George Reef Lighthouse, built on a remote wave-washed rock in response to the tragic sinking of the S.S Brother Jonathan, took almost 10 years to construct, 1881 -1890. The structure crowns Northwest Seal Rock, 7 miles off Point St. George, and guided mariners around the Dragon Rocks” of the reef for nearly a century. Abandoned by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1975 due to its unique dangers to personnel, its fully-automated replacement buoy holds none of the incredible history and allure of the original stone edifice.

Del Norte County is its official owner, leasing it to the St. George Reef Lighthouse Preservation Society. The Society, founded to assess and preserve the physical structure, also strives to interpret the human story encompassed by three separate eras of maritime history. In 1983 “Operation Lens” volunteers, with aid from the Coast Guard, disassembled and removed the magnificent first-order Fresnel lens from its lonely ocean tower, and reassembled it in the Bolen Annex of the Del Norte Historical Society’s Main Museum, where visitors can learn more today.

St George moved into the 21st century with the installation of a new solar-powered lamp and still shines out across the waters for mariners’ continued safety. The Society offers tours of the St. George Reef Lighthouse intermittently from October through May per federal permit requirements and aviation weather constraints.

The Main Museum is best known for one of the finest collections of Native American basketry by the Tolowa and Yurok Indians, and many other Native American artifacts. Other items donated by the families of early settlers include pioneer tools, weapons, farming, and mining equipment. Beautiful furniture, clothing fashions, needlework, and China over a hundred years old are on display.

It was here that I learned it was called a first-order lens and that means it's the biggest Fresnel lens that was made for instance the one at Hatteras might be a third order but this was the first order and they don't make many of them.

After a horrible shipwreck on the West Coast massive loss of life, it was decided that they needed a proper Lighthouse and this was the lens from that lighthouse and I also learned that the lighthouse was so remote that the keeper would take a wife and probably kids and go out there and live for years and many people went crazy from the loneliness.

They couldn't even visit the guy because it was so hard to get to him, they just had to somehow pull supplies up a rope from a ship at anchor. It was pretty rough.

The other interesting part of the museum at Crescent City that we went to was a wonderful lady and she was a nurse at the hospital at Crescent City named Addie Memedom. and she did such a marvelous job that the owner and founder of Union Carbide said he would fund a hospital in Crescent City but only if Addie was in charge.

She was so cool a large section of the upstairs of the hospital is a kind of a shrine to her.

I contacted the museum coordinator to find out more of who she was.

Hi Randall,

Her name is Addie Meedom.

Please see the attached newsletter, page 9. This is from a program I did on the Women of Del Norte County. There are quite a few interesting articles in the newsletter. I thought you might enjoy reading it.

Karen

Karen Betlejewski, Coordinator

Del Norte County Historical Society

577 H Street

Crescent City, CA 95531

manager@delnortehistory.org

707-464-3922 phone

George Owen Knapp (January 21, 1855, in Hatfield, Massachusetts – July 21, 1945, in Santa Barbara, California) was a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. He was the President of Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company in Chicago, Illinois by 1893. In 1894 he was a founder of the Union Calcium Carbide Company which he reformulated as Union Carbide in 1904.

I wouldn't say he fell in love with her but loved her service so much that he said he would build a hospital for Crescent City but only if she were in charge.

As hospitals were scarce in the region, he donated the funds to build Seaside Hospital (aka the Knapp Hospital) in Crescent City, California. That hospital opened in 1931.

and because my sister Sheila is a nurse, I sent her the info because anytime I discover something cool about a nurse, I like to share it with her.

Here is her bio

Adeline Loretta Littlefield Dyer Meedom

Addie was born in 1893 in California to Charles Henry Littlefield and Emma M. Wright. She grew up

in Eureka with her mother and younger brother, Clarence. She had just graduated from nurses training at Union Labor Hospital in Eureka when she came to Del Norte in the mid-1920s. She began working as an assistant to Mrs. Yuill at Dr. Fine’s 2 story-hospital at the corner of E and 2nd Streets. Addie was Mrs. Dyer at that time and a new resident here. When Mrs. Yuill left in November of 1927, Addie took over the management of the tiny hospital as the nurse-in-charge. Help was scarce and Addie

did it all, nursing and housekeeping. She was on duty from the early morning to the late

evening and on-call the rest of the time. She washed dishes, scrubbed floors, and did other

chores as well. During that time, George Owen Knapp of Santa Barbara was visiting as

part of the “Save the Redwoods League”. He was a diabetic and was interested in what medical facilities were available in the places that he was visited. He found the town extremely

lacking in its hospital facilities. His first thought was to add on to the little 2-story hospital

but realized it would still be inadequate so he decided to build a small hospital and to put

Mrs. Dyer in charge. On July 3, 1931, the Knapp Hospital opened to the public. Addie was the superintendent, chief accountant, head nurse, and anesthetist. She was in full charge with the burden of hospital management falling upon her shoulders. As the occupancy increased, a south wing was added

and Addie found things becoming more complex, so she asked the Knapp Fund directors for help and

they appointed an advisory committee of local people to make sure that the best hospital facilities were

given to the community. After Mr. Knapp died in 1945, the county purchased the hospital from the

Knapp Foundation renaming it Seaside. Addie operated things much the same. The hospital district

board made sure that Addie had the means and facilities to do her job the way she wanted it done. She

was instrumental in securing more beds, especially the 1954 chronic patients’ addition. Addie’s workload lessened in 1957 when the Board decided to appoint Bob Swanson as the new Administrator at the

hospital with Addie still serving as superintendent. She served as such from 1931-1969. Addie Dyer

married Viggo “Vic” Meedom in 1957. The two of them took trips overseas to visit Viggo’s boyhood home

in Leaving, Denmark, and to visit with his family. They also visited Scandinavia on a three-month excursion under the Walker Fellowship Grant of 1975 to check out the health systems there. Civic-minded, she was a member of Eastern Star, Soroptomists, Emblem Club, Red Cross, Gray Ladies, Del Norte

Nurses Association and Hospital Volunteers, and other organizations, some of which she helps found.

Addie died in April of 1981 and Vic kept her ashes at the home until his death when their ashes were

mixed and scattered at a place in the woods that they so loved. It was because of Addie Meedom’s selfless devotion, that she has left her undying mark on this community in nursing. It is this dedication

that led the community to name its assisted-living facility in her honor.

The other event was a tour of a lighthouse in Cresent on the beach. We met the lighthouse keepers who were campground hosts as they lived at the lighthouse. They gave tours every day and we enjoyed ourselves.

Outside I saw an old evergreen that had been storm twisted over the years. A large deformed section looked to be dead but on its very end, there was new growth. How cool it was to see its determination to survive in such a salty windy place

I thought I would just point out something about our cat, Bert.

He has his cat door on the RV and he goes and comes as he wants in the evenings mostly.

He is supposed to be a Mouser and he does the opposite. In the evening when he gets active, he brings in a mouse to play on the living room floor. We try to catch it and shoo it out along with him. He does a revolving door most of the time and that goes on 3 times and then finally he gives up. This sometimes happens three times in one night and of course, it gets very old. Some of them escape and so they're hiding in the RV somewhere. We have a situation where our mouser is doing the opposite of his prescribed job.