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"You close your eyes and imagine what it's going to look like, and I see beautiful developments springing up, and contributing to the community--a place our kids can stay and get jobs," says Olson. "This is the frontier for us. This is our place to shine."

Meanwhile, at the big green warehouse farther south, Ken Bates is getting ready to build a new fishing boat. The future is bright, and the Fisherman's Terminal was the key to that.

The trolling fleet is rebuilding its ranks--and the fishing is good, for the most part. "We have a really healthy winter crab fishery that never declined," says Bates. "The shrimp fishery is considered viable, as are those for flatfish, oysters, and more. And, generally speaking, in most of coastal California we have a healthy salmon fishery--except for up here." The number of salmon returning to the Klamath River has dropped so dramatically in the past three years that early this season officials were talking about a complete ban on ocean salmon fishing along the Oregon and California coast to protect the Klamath fish.

Across from Bates' workshop sits a tiny smokehouse that dates back to the 1930s. It looks like a kid's playhouse, its warped, rough brown planks capped by a peaked roof from which two rusted stovepipes curl like a steer's horns. Tacked to it is a faded hand-painted sign that says "salmon." It's idle at the moment, but a couple used it in the not-too-distant past. It looks like it could easily be used again, and it's picturesque. It seems emblematic of Eureka's embrace of its rich fishing past as it looks ahead to the future. Perhaps it will be there forever.

This article is greatly abridged. For the full text, see the print edition of Coast & Ocean.

Heidi Walters is a staff writer for the North Coast Journal, a prize-winning weekly community newspaper in Humboldt County.

Copyright 2006 © California Coastal Conservancy All Rights Reserved.