The Fields Landing post office opened in 1889, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Adele (1889), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 287137 years
Founding year: the first Fields Landing post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Fields Landing’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Before the arrival of European settlers, the area now known as Humboldt County was occupied by a number of indigenous peoples, including the Wiyot, Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, Chilula, Whilkut, and the southern Athabascans. Fields Landing is located within the original territory of the Wiyot tribe.
The first recorded entrance into Humboldt Bay occurred in 1806 by members of a Russian-American company from Sitka. The Josiah Gregg party arrived by land in December 1849, and by 1850 the first ships came to the bay bringing men seeking gold. As the Gold Rush subsided, the economy shifted to the use of the surrounding natural resources, mainly timber, salmon, and agricultural land. The area was a prime exporter of agricultural products from 1857 to 1900.
Passages that mention Fields Landing, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Humboldt County, California1915 · page 750Read the page →
Read the text
On leaving the farm Mr. Swanson found employment in the Hookton warehouse in Humboldt county. When Fields Landing had only two houses he went to the new town, where for four and one-half years he held the agency for the Eel River & Eureka Railroad, besides operating a hotel and carryingon a general store. In 1904 he became proprietor of the South Park Hotel in Eureka and in 1909 he helped to build the new race track, which he operated under a lease until 1914, when he sold his South Park interests. Since that time he has engaged in farming one hundred sixty acres on Table Bluflf, thus
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Fields Landing, 1889 to 1944
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Fields Landing. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1944Fortuna sheet · 1:62,500
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Fields Landing.
Famous people
Famous people close to Fields Landing
Nobody well known was born in Fields Landing itself, so here are the best known from just nearby.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
