Fieldbrook (formerly Bokman's Prairie and Buckman's Prairie) is a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in Humboldt County,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is located north-east of Arcata, at an elevation of . The population was 860 following the 2010 census.

Geography

Fieldbrook is located on California's North Coast, approximately north of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and south of the

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

state line. Located on the edge of dense redwood forest, the area was once home to thriving

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

companies. Fieldbrook is east of the larger, unincorporated, seaside town of McKinleyville and the Arcata-Eureka Airport, approximately northeast of the harbor city of Arcata, and about north of the city of Eureka, the Humboldt

County seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

. Fieldbrook is at the northern edge of the McKinleyville-Arcata-Eureka-Fortuna corridor along US Highway 101, where about eighty percent of Humboldt County's population lives and most of its businesses are located. The ZIP Code is 95519. The community is inside

area code 707 Area codes 707 and 369 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the northwestern part of the U.S. state of California. The area codes serve part of the northern San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the North Coast. ...

. Fieldbrook is located at the right-angle bend where Murray Road becomes Fieldbrook Road. In the mid-1990s, Fieldbrook was a stereotypical sleepy country hamlet, with junk cars sitting in weedy yards along the main road in one block and

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a species of Caprinae, goat-antelope that is mostly kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the ...

s grazing alongside a church in the next. With the decline of the local timber industry, the increase of

remote work Remote work (also called telecommuting, telework, work from or at home, WFH as an initialism, hybrid work, and other terms) is the practice of work (human activity), working at or from one's home or Third place, another space rather than from ...

ing professionals, and the emergence of the North Coast as a

retirement Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload. Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...

destination, Fieldbrook with its mild weather (summer temperatures seldom exceed and winter nights rarely drop below has undergone

gentrification Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents (the "gentry") and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has ...

. Sprawling ranch-style (single-story) homes on isolated lots wedged between timber tracts are selling for $500,000, and at least one timber tract has become a gated community. The few blocks of paved and unpaved roads that comprise Fieldbrook property include modest homes, an

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

and two churches, as well as a

general store A general merchant store (also known as general merchandise store, general dealer, village shop, or country store) is a rural or small-town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, someti ...

, a

winery A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the cultivation and production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feat ...

and an apple orchard that host public events. Larger residences whose owners identify with the Fieldbrook community continue south along Fieldbrook Road as it heads inland and uphill to the small city of Blue Lake (population 1,200) at the foot of the Coast Range. The road connects there with State Highway 299, a winding route that crosses the mountains and connects with

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels thro ...

in Redding, about east. Fieldbrook is on the north bank of the Mad River, which flows into the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. Although the Mad River supplies the water to much of Humboldt County's population, the small population does not have a significant impact on the river's flow. The north side of Fieldbrook Road is second-growth (

coppice Coppicing is the traditional method in woodland management of cutting down a tree to a tree stump, stump, which in many species encourages new Shoot (botany), shoots to grow from the stump or roots, thus ultimately regrowing the tree. A forest ...

, multiple thinner trunks sprouting from the stumps of harvested trees) redwood forest with the occasional clearing for a house, and the logging rules allow the forest canopy to maintain a height of . A narrow zone adjacent to the road is maintained as an unlogged buffer, presenting the illusion of virgin forest to tourists. On the north side of the buffer, in any given year the majority of the timber tracts have been growing for at least seven years, comprising a wilderness if not exactly parkland. The region is rich with wildlife and animals like

deer A deer (: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate of the family Cervidae (informally the deer family). Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes, among others, muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, and fallow deer) ...

, elk, foxes,

raccoon The raccoon ( or , ''Procyon lotor''), sometimes called the North American, northern or common raccoon (also spelled racoon) to distinguish it from Procyonina, other species of raccoon, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest ...

s, and the occasional black bear or

cougar The cougar (''Puma concolor'') (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, KOO-gər''), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther is a large small cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North America, North, Central America, Cent ...

are found.

History

A post office operated in Fieldbrook from 1902 to 1932. In the late 1800s to early 1900s, much of Fieldbrook was owned by lumber companies. Railroad lines ran through Fieldbrook to the Humboldt Bay.

Education

Fieldbrook is the seat of the Fieldbrook Elementary School District,Humboldt County Office of Education
/ref> and home of the Fieldbrook School, a public K-8 school.Fieldbrook School
/ref>

Demographics

The 2020 United States census reported that Fieldbrook had a population of 827. The population density was . The racial makeup of Fieldbrook was 685 (82.8%)

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 7 (0.8%)

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

, 19 (2.3%) Native American, 5 (0.6%) Asian, 3 (0.4%)

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...

, 14 (1.7%) from other races, and 94 (11.4%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 46 persons (5.6%). The whole population lived in households. There were 344 households, out of which 80 (23.3%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 178 (51.7%) were married-couple households, 27 (7.8%) were cohabiting couple households, 62 (18.0%) had a female householder with no partner present, and 77 (22.4%) had a male householder with no partner present. 93 households (27.0%) were one person, and 36 (10.5%) were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 2.4. There were 215 families (62.5% of all households). The age distribution was 145 people (17.5%) under the age of 18, 35 people (4.2%) aged 18 to 24, 178 people (21.5%) aged 25 to 44, 221 people (26.7%) aged 45 to 64, and 248 people (30.0%) who were 65years of age or older. The median age was 51.6years. For every 100 females, there were 97.4 males. There were 377 housing units at an average density of , of which 344 (91.2%) were occupied. Of these, 279 (81.1%) were owner-occupied, and 65 (18.9%) were occupied by renters.

Government

In the state legislature, Fieldbrook is in , and . Federally, Fieldbrook is in

California's 2nd congressional district California's 2nd congressional district is a List of United States congressional districts, U.S. congressional district in California. Jared Huffman, a Democratic Party (United States), Democrat, has represented the district since January 2013. ...

, represented by Jared Huffman.

References