Night Light of the North Coast: Eureka Slough Railroad Bridge

A night on the old Railroad bridge over the Eureka Slough at the north end of Eureka, Humboldt County, California. Trains thundered down these tracks regularly back in the day. Photographed June 7, 2018.

I remember when the rails in Humboldt County rumbled to the passage of great trains rolling regularly through the county. Looking back, I took far too little advantage of the photographic opportunities they afforded while their time and mine here overlapped. Now we have them in memory only, and photographing the remnants of their steel carriages and rusting rails evokes ghosts of a bygone day.

With thoughts of capturing some of that once mighty line’s remains in the stark light of the modern night I found myself on the old railroad bridge over the Eureka Slough at the north end of Eureka, Humboldt County, California. Here the Old meets New, as this section of the former track is slated to become part of the Humboldt Bay Trail, connecting Eureka with Arcata for non-motorized traffic (https://humboldtgov.org/humboldtbaytrail ).

In photography’s early days images were monochromatic, reproducing all the vibrant colors of a scene as a range of gray values from white to black. Film was an ideal medium for capturing history, and the early history it recorded lives on today as black and white images. For over a hundred years photography recorded a world without color for posterity.

The way we are shown things shapes how we see them. My own vision of history that was recorded by early photographic images seems to be in black and white. When I think of the 1800’s, I see scenes in black and white, or maybe in sepia’s warmer, but still monochromatic tones. I know people lived in a world every bit as colorful as ours, but my imagination of it has certainly been influenced by my exposure to so much history presented as black and white images.

The images I am sharing here were photographed with a modern digital camera, which of course records a scene in color. I feel that by presenting them in black and white it might help bridge the gulf of time between that night on the bridge taking pictures and the days of yore, not all that long ago, when the trains whistled and chugged through the towns and countrysides of our North Coast.

When become absorbed in a black and white photograph I can feel my mind processing in the background whether the image is grayscale (black and white) because it was captured before color film, or whether it were first created in color and then made into a black and white as these were. It’s not important to the image itself, but its creation history is something that interests me.

My son, my brother and his son and I wait beside the Eureka Slough railroad tracks. It doesn’t always feel safe out there at night, whether due to thoughts of unfriendly people or ravenous beasts, so I was grateful to have the company of family while photographing.

To read previous entries of “Night Light of the North Coast,” click on my name above the article. To keep abreast of my most current photography or peer into its past, visit and contact me at my website mindscapefx.com or follow me on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx .

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Willie Caso-Mayhem
Guest
4 years ago

🕯🌳Good morning David and your words are as spectacular as your photography. And your damn straight to take someone along with you going to one of those spots. Good black and white. 👍🏾👏😁And thank you Kym for sharing.

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Guest
4 years ago

Thanks.

Eric Kirk
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Eric Kirk
4 years ago

I can’t wait to ride my bicycle across it!

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