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Another sad day for Humboldt County.
By NATHAN RUSHTON, The Eureka Reporter
Published: May 5 2008, 8:45 PM
Category: Local News
Topic: CommunityCoombs, 72, of Ferndale, had been hospitalized for heart problems since April 26, according to St. Joseph Hospital.
Gerald Garvey, a friend and forestry manager for Redwood Empire Sawmills, said he first met Coombs in the 1970s when he was a client for the Eureka-based consulting firm Natural Resources Management.
“He is from the old school,” Garvey said of Coombs.
As part of a West Coast timber dynasty that spanned four generations, Coombs was featured as a “legendary logger” by the California Forest Products Commission in 1999:
“When Rogan Coombs speaks, his voice sounds like a thousand ball bearings thrown into a grinder. Hard work, hard play and the kicked habit of smoking 100 cigars a week have lent a smoky rasp to his richly booming voice. But there’s no mistaking the sound of pride in that voice when he discusses his family history.”
Originally from Maine, Coombs’ great-grandfather, Silas Coombs, settled in the Mendocino County area after making the trek to the North Coast during the Gold Rush era.
Silas struck it rich from California’s plentiful virgin timber stands and amassed his wealth through the operation of three sawmills.
Friend and forester Rich Munoz helps manage Coombs’ 12,000 acres of timberlands that straddle southern Humboldt and northern Mendocino counties.
“He was an intelligent businessman,” Munoz said. “He made good decisions and people liked him.”
Coombs worked in the timber industry throughout the state in a career that spanned many decades and included working with his father Mal at his sawmill in Piercy in the 1950s through the 1970s, when Coombs went into business for himself.
Along with the McMillan family, Coombs also helped develop the Arcata-area Woodland Heights subdivision.
Munoz said it was Coombs’ lifelong dream to see a timber history attraction on his property and supported the local timber heritage preservation efforts of Humboldt County’s Timber Heritage Association and a similar volunteer group in Mendocino County.
Chris Baldo, president of Roots of Motive Power located in Willits, said Coombs was the largest financial donor to his group, which began documenting and preserving timber industry history in the region in 1982.
Coombs donated several pieces of equipment, including two gas-powered railroad speeder cars — one from the Pacific Lumber Co. and the other from the Long Bell Lumber Co. — that were used to haul timber crews.
Baldo said Coombs had a longtime interest in timber history that started back in his college days when he attended Oregon State University during the 1950s, when there were still steam engine logging operations.
“He paid for some pretty astounding restoration projects,” Baldo said.
Among those were the restoration of two 14-foot-tall wooden wheels for horse-drawn timber equipment and a “straddle buggy” used to transport lumber at the Coombs Lumber Co. in Piercy.
And when the Pacific Lumber Co. shut down its railroad in Scotia, Baldo said Coombs obtained the Train Master’s Office and paid carpenters to restore it back to its former glory.
“Nobody else would have taken the initiative,” Baldo said.
Staff Report
Article Launched: 05/06/2008 12:23:30 AM PDTMarla Fields and Annan Paterson
- A Hamilton SMART station will reduce local car traffic. Many of Hamilton’s 8,000 residents are within walking and biking distance to the proposed rail station. That means fewer cars will pass by the schools on their way out of the neighborhood to enter the freeway.
Additionally, nearly 2,000 employees are located about a half mile from the station site. A survey by Q&A Research Company determined 41 percent of employees would commute to work by SMART three or more times per week. The number of new cars added from outside neighborhoods is a small fraction of the total station user base, so the net effect will be to reduce traffic near the schools.
- Reducing neighborhood car traffic increases safety for children. Statistics from SMART’s environmental impact report reveal the biggest threat facing our children who walk and bike is being hit by cars. In the United States, from 2000 to 2007, roughly 4,000 kids under 15 were killed and 300,000 injured by cars and trucks while walking or riding their bikes. During the same period, there were zero deaths to children under 11 by all U.S. commuter rail. (National Highway and Traffic Safety Analysis Administration and Federal Rail Association Office of Safety Analysis database.)
- Children will have a safe route to school. Hamilton children need never cross railroad
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tracks when going to school. Due to the existing neighborhood design, the Safe Route to School plan will take children over a small bridge.- SMART will greatly improve cycling conditions. SMART’s 70-mile pedestrian and cyclist pathway will take kids off dangerous shared road paths and encourage more kids to safely participate in a healthy, zero-emission lifestyle.
- SMART rail is clean. The SMART train will lead to net reductions in criteria pollutants and greenhouse gases due primarily to the decrease in car traffic (EIR 3.5.5). The new clean diesel technology that these European railcars will employ is described by Scientific American as “nearly as green as hybrids.” SMART trains will use ultra-low sulfur fuel and highly effective particulate traps, resulting in the same amount of particulate matter as a single car, as described in SMART’s “clean train” white paper No. 6.
- A Hamilton station means trains move slowly through the Hamilton neighborhood. Instead of passing through quickly, trains would slow to 20 mph as they approach the station.
- A Hamilton station will allow teachers and some families to arrive to school safely and reliably. The Novato Charter School in Hamilton draws families from Southern and Central Marin, Sonoma County and Northern Novato. They will be able to use rail or the bicycle pathway to commute. Additionally, many teachers commute daily from Petaluma and points further north. Federal Rail Association Office of Safety Analysis statistics prove that riding in commuter rail in the United States is 67 times safer per passenger mile than riding in a car.
Kalvin Platt, acclaimed green-community architect and former director of Harvard’s Land Development Graduate School of Design, has endorsed the Hamilton SMART station “as a unique opportunity to transform a major portion of Novato into a sustainable community providing benefits of reduced auto trips, less traffic, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and energy use.”
The IJ editorial board and the Greenbelt Alliance also have endorsed the Hamilton SMART station as the logical choice.
We encourage Novato families to let their council members and school administrators know that they want a Hamilton SMART station – for the kids’ sake.
Marla Fields is a task force leader for Safe Routes to School, chairwoman of the Curb Your Carbon Global Warming Educational Program and a Hamilton resident. Annan Paterson is a Novato mother, grandmother and educator who has worked at Hamilton area schools as a school psychologist. She is active in local government and nonprofit boards.
