About Arcata

Arcata, originally Union Town or Union, is a city adjacent to the Arcata Bay (northern) portion of Humboldt Bay in Humboldt County, California, United States. At the 2010 census, Arcata's population was 17,231. This college town, located 280 miles (450 km) north of San Francisco (via Highway 101), is home to Humboldt State University. Arcata is also the location of the Arcata Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for the administration of natural resources, lands, and mineral programs, including the Headwaters Forest, on approximately 200,000 acres of public land in Northwestern California.

Arcata was originally founded as Union Town or Union (the permanent name change to "Arcata" occurred in 1860). Union was created as a port, and re-provisioning center for the gold mines in the Klamath, Trinity, and Salmon mountains to the east, and was very briefly the county seat during this period. It was slightly closer to the mines than Eureka, which gave Union an early advantage. What was to become the first significant town on Humboldt Bay began as Union Company employees laid out the plaza and first city streets in the Spring of 1850. By later in the 1850s redwood timber replaced the depleted gold fields as the economic driver for the region and Eureka became the principal city on the bay due to its possession of the better harbor, gaining it the county seat by the end of the decade.

The Union Town post office opened in 1852 and changed its name to Arcata in 1860.

In 1886, Arcata expelled its Chinese population and enacted the following resolution: "We, the citizens of Arcata and vicinity, wish the total expulsion of the Chinese from our midst. We endorse the efforts of Eurekato exclude all Chinese settlements in the city and environs."

There are several neighborhoods within Arcata, including Aldergrove, Alliance, the "Arcata Bottoms", portions of Bayside, California Heights, Greenview, Northtown, South G Street, Sunny Brae, Valley West, Westwood, Sunset, the Downtown/Plaza Area, Redwood Park, Bayview, Fickle Hill, and the Marsh.