 The museum at its original location | |
  Location within California | |
| Location | Arcata, California, United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40°52′20″N124°05′05″W / 40.872255°N 124.084819°W |
| Type | natural history museum |
| Collection size | 2,000 [1] |
| Director | Julie Van Sickle [2] |
| Website | natmus |
Cal Poly Humboldt Natural History Museum is a natural history museum on the campus of the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt in Arcata, California in the United States.
Wells Fargo Bank donated the original location of the museum to Humboldt State University (HSU). [3]
Around 2010, the university was unable to continue to fund the operations of the museum. The museum closed. Eventually, the Humboldt Science Mathematics Center/Redwood Science Project took over the management and the museum reopened. Jeffrey White became the executive director and Julie Van Sickle the Manager. Museum administrators sought grants and public support in order to sustain itself. In 2013, it was announced that the museum would move from its original location into the location where it is currently located. The new building was donated by Redwood Capital Bank. It is 2,700 square feet in size. [3] The museum's former building is now a Redwood Capital Bank branch location. [4]
The museum has over 2,000 natural history objects. [1] Collections include Native American cultural objects. [5] They have a large fossil collection, called the Maloney Fossil Collection, [6] including sand dollars and Busycon contrarium from the Pliocene and a Chlamys from the Miocene. [7]
Students from CPH assist in the design and curation of exhibitions at the museum. [3] Many exhibits are interactive. Visitors can touch a meteorite, fossils, and dinosaur bone casts. [8] Most of the exhibitions focus on the natural history of the region surrounding the museum. [9]
Humboldt County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 136,463. The county seat is Eureka.
Arcata is a city adjacent to the Arcata Bay (northern) portion of Humboldt Bay in Humboldt County, California, United States. At the 2020 census, Arcata's population was 18,857. Arcata was first colonized in 1850 as Union, was officially established in 1858, and was renamed Arcata in 1860. It is located 280 miles (450 km) north of San Francisco, and is home to California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. Arcata is also the location of the Arcata Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for the administration of natural resources, lands and mineral programs, including the Headwaters Forest, on approximately 200,000 acres (810 km2) of public land in Northwestern California.
Eureka is a city and the county seat of Humboldt County, located on the North Coast of California. The city is located on U.S. Route 101 on the shores of Humboldt Bay, 270 miles (435 km) north of San Francisco and 100 miles (161 km) south of the Oregon border. At the 2020 census, the population of the city was 26,512. As of the 2010 census, the population of Greater Eureka was 45,034.
Northern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northern 48 of the state's 58 counties. Its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Sacramento area, the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area. Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt is a public university in Arcata, California. It is one of three polytechnic universities in the California State University (CSU) system and the northernmost campus in the system. The main campus, situated hillside at the edge of a coast redwood forest, has commanding views overlooking Arcata, much of Humboldt Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. The college town setting on the California North Coast, 8 miles (13 km) north of Eureka, 279 miles (449 km) north of San Francisco, and 654 miles (1053 km) north of Los Angeles is notable for its natural beauty. It is the most westerly four-year university in the contiguous United States. Humboldt is a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI).
Humboldt Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, containing Rockefeller Forest, the world's largest remaining contiguous old-growth forest of coast redwoods. It is located 30 miles (48 km) south of Eureka, California, near Weott in southern Humboldt County, within Northern California, named after the great German nineteenth-century scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. The park was established by the Save the Redwoods League in 1921 largely from lands purchased from the Pacific Lumber Company. Beginning with the dedication of the Raynal Bolling Memorial Grove, it has grown to become the third-largest park in the California State Park system, now containing 51,651 acres (20,902 ha) through acquisitions and gifts to the state.
Annie Montague Alexander was an explorer, naturalist, paleontological collector, and philanthropist.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture is a natural history museum on the campus of the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is administered by the UW College of Arts and Sciences. Established in 1899 as the Washington State Museum, the museum traces its origins to a high school naturalist club formed in 1879. The museum is the oldest in Washington state and boasts a collection of more than 16 million artifacts, including the world's largest collection of spread bird wings. The Burke Museum is the official state museum of Washington.
The Natural History Museum is a natural history museum located in Berlin, Germany. It exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history and in such domain it is one of three major museums in Germany alongside Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt and Museum Koenig in Bonn.
Fort Humboldt State Historic Park is a California state park, located in Eureka, California, United States. Its displays interpret the former U.S. Army fort, which was staffed from 1853–1870, the interactions between European Americans and Native Americans in roughly the same period, logging equipment and local narrow gauge railroad history of the region. Within the collection, there are trains, logging equipment, including a fully functional Steam Donkey engine, and an authentic Native American dug-out canoe. The Fort overlooks Humboldt Bay from atop a bluff. The North Coast regional headquarters of the California State Parks system is located onsite.
The Big River is a 41.7-mile-long (67.1 km) river in Mendocino County, California, that flows from the northern California Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean at Mendocino, Mendocino County, California. From the mouth, brackish waters extend 8 miles (13 km) upstream, forming the longest undeveloped estuary in the state.
Save the Redwoods League is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and restore coast redwood and giant sequoia trees through the preemptive purchase of development rights of notable areas with such forests.
Redwood Bowl is a collegiate athletic stadium on the west coast of the United States, on the campus of Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. It is used for Humboldt State Lumberjacks football games and track and field meets, as well as local high school contests. Construction began in the late 1930s as part of a Work Projects Administration (WPA) grant.
Crannell is a former settlement in Humboldt County, California. It is located 4.5 miles (7.2 km) southeast of Trinidad, at an elevation of 203 feet (62 m).
King Salmon is an unincorporated community in Humboldt County, California, United States, located on the shore of Buhne Point directly across from the entrance to Humboldt Bay, slightly south of Eureka and 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Fields Landing, at an elevation of 3 feet (0.91 m). It has a Eureka zipcode and area code and is part of Greater Eureka although outside the city limits.
The nonprofit Ferndale Museum, located in Ferndale, California, houses and exhibits artifacts, documents and papers from settlement during the California Gold Rush to the present including an active Bosch-Omori seismograph. The area of collection covers the lower Eel River Valley as far south as the Mattole River Valley and west to the Pacific Ocean. Collections include over 8,000 photographs, back issues of the Ferndale Enterprise newspaper, and family papers spanning 150 years.
Paleontology in California refers to paleontologist research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of California. California contains rocks of almost every age from the Precambrian to the Recent.
Tilden Daken was an American landscape painter known primarily for his oil paintings of the California redwoods, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the countryside scenery of Northern California and Southern California. He also painted in Alaska, Mexico, Baja, the Hawaiian Islands, the South Seas, and parts of the East Coast of the United States.