History
Before Euro-American settlers arrived in the mid-1800s, the native peoples occupying the lower Mad River watershed were the Wiyot (from approximately Blue Lake to its mouth, plus the greater Humboldt Bay region) who spoke a dialect affiliated with the Algonquian language family, with upriver reaches controlled by three different groups whose languages are related to the Athabascan family, the Whilkut, Nongatl and Lassik (Baumhoff 1958). Today, among these distinct groups, only the Wiyot-affiliated Blue Lake Rancheria is a Federally-recognized tribe and holds lands in trust for its citizens. The Whilkut, Nongatl and Lassik were essentially annihilated during the Bald Hills War in the 1860s. The river was named in December, 1849 in memory of an incident when Dr. Josiah Gregg lost his temper when his gold exploration party did not wait for him at the river mouth. In 1921 the Humboldt State Teachers College was founded in Arcata, now known as Humboldt State University.
Read more about this topic: Mad River (California)
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)