Samoa, California

Samoa is a census-designated place in Humboldt County, California. It is located 1.5mi northwest of Eureka, at an elevation of 23 feet . Samoa is located in the northern peninsula of Humboldt Bay and is the site of the Samoa Cookhouse, one of the last remaining original, lumber style cookhouses. The name Samoa is used interchangeably with the peninsula it occupies. The population was 258 at the 2010 census.HistoryPrior to private settlement of the area, the north spit at the entrance to Humboldt Bay was used by a series of Federal government projects including the 1851 to 1892 Humboldt Harbor Light, in 1862, a prisoner of war camp for Native Americans captured in the Bald Hills War, the Humboldt Bay Life-Saving Station in 1878, and the stonemason finishing yard and trans-shipment point for foundation stones for the St. George Reef Light from 1883 to 1891 at Paysonville.The nongovernmental settlement was known as Brownsville, after James Henry Brown a dairy farmer who settled his ranch on the present site of Samoa in 1865. James Brown was the first permanent white settler on the north peninsula of Humboldt Bay. He was born in Quincy, Illinois, in 1830 and came to Humboldt county in 1853, until a group of Eureka businessmen formed the Samoa Land and Improvement Company in 1889. Vance Lumber Company purchased the Humboldt Bay frontage from Samoa Land and Improvement Company for construction of a large sawmill in 1892. Eureka and Klamath River Railroad was chartered in 1893 to connect the Samoa sawmill and associated worker housing facilities to the city of Arcata and timberlands near the Mad River. The Samoa sawmill was the largest in Humboldt County when purchased by Andrew B. Hammond in 1900. The Samoa post office opened in 1894.