This morning The New Yorker features a long report from writer Michael Waters, who spends some time talking to the people of Scotia about the decade-long, not-so-smooth transition from its company-town past to … whatever comes next.

The story features a lot of nice history from the town, including — new to me — a brief account of the mutual hostility between Pacific Lumber and the strong Humboldt County labor movement in the interwar period. Telling quote:

In 1922, an organizer with the I.W.W. complained, of Scotia’s residents, that “it would take a Sherlock Holmes to find any militancy in these tame apes.”

The apes were tamed, of course, by the old, pre-Maxxam version of the company and its remarkably generous, patrician relationship with its workforce.  

Apart from that, we meet Scotia old-timers, both those who can and can’t afford to buy their houses and a remote-work pandemic era refugee looking to put down roots in the town. We pay a visit to the Scotia Inn, and the stalled effort to establish it as an upscale weed spa for Bay Area tech workers. And we hang out at the Post Office, as one apparently does. 

Pretty nice read. Check it out.