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Today, Humboldt State University is the mainstay of the city of Arcata, and the university contributes about five percent of the overall economy of Humboldt County. But for more than fifty years, from 1902–1903 to 1956, the Arcata plant of the California Barrel Company, Ltd. (Cabco), was the backbone of Arcata’s economy. The plant was sold to the Roddis Plywood Corporation in 1956 for more than $12 million.

In 1883, the California Barrel Company was founded in San Francisco by John Koster, who had come to California in 1859 from Charleston, South Carolina. At the age of sixteen, his son, Fred Koster, went to work for his father in the Cabco plant at Eighth and Brannan streets in San Francisco in 1887. He succeeded his father and later became superintendent and president in 1905. Fred Koster was a civic and business leader, serving the city of San Francisco on many important committees until his death in 1958.

The Arcata division of the San Francisco company was first known as the Humboldt Cooperage Company and employed fewer than fifty people. The plant included a small warehouse, two dry kilns, a boiler and engine house, and a building that housed the mill. As the demand for wooden containers increased, the company expanded the Arcata plant. By 1915, the company employed 115 persons in the factory and 25 men in the woods, which were located just north of Essex.

The spruce and fir bolts were shipped to Arcata, where they were sawed into staves and shipped to San Francisco. The barrels were assembled in San Francisco and were used for both liquid and dry products, such as oils, asphaltum, sugar, butter, fish and fruit. Henry Koster, another son, enlarged the company’s field of operation by finding an outlet in the Orient. In 1915, the Arcata plant was called “the best-equipped plant of its kind in the United States.”

The Depression hit the local lumber industry hard, and the Arcata Barrel Factory was no exception. Cabco, the parent company in San Francisco, had to be refinanced by a Canadian bank. But the Arcata plant, like many of the other local mills, spread operating hours so that all employees could meet their living obligations.

Through the years, the Arcata factory employed many Arcata residents, and all businesses in the city felt the impact of the company payroll. The company helped many students work their way through Humboldt State College, and before formal salary schedules appeared, many high school and college teachers worked there in the summer to supplement their incomes.

The California Barrel Company first made barrels in San Francisco for the Spreckels Sugar Company. The barrels were made of imported oak and ash from the eastern United States. Rising prices forced the company to turn to local spruce and fir.

As early as 1890, Humboldt County became a major source of supply, and wood bolts were sent from the county to the San Francisco factory. When Cabco acquired timber and built the Arcata plant in 1902–1903, the Arcata operation became the largest of the company’s operations, and soon Cabco was the biggest barrel producer west of the Mississippi River.

The first machinery was operated by steam, but in 1908 the plant was electrified. The plant continued to expand by adding a new kiln and office building in 1909 and a new warehouse by 1911. By 1924, the plant covered more than thirteen acres with an investment of $400,000, exclusive of timberlands. When Roddis Plywood purchased the property in 1956, the plant covered a twenty-nine-acre site in southwest Arcata.

The company operated bolt camps near Essex, at the head of Strawberry Creek and at Dows Prairie. In the late 1920s, Cabco had a bolt camp on the North Fork of the Mad River, where logs were cut into stave bolts and shipped to Arcata by the Northern Redwood Company railroad. Spruce, fir, hemlock and white fir were cut for bolts. Through the years, the Arcata plant also purchased logs from the Hammond Lumber Company.

During 1928–1929, a wirebound box division was added to the Arcata plant. Cabco purchased a wirebound company in Oakland, and the machinery was shipped to Arcata. The previous owners, Robert Yegge and Marren Meyers, came to Arcata to supervise installation and operation. Soon Cabco plants in Arcata and Los Angeles began to turn out thousands of wirebound boxes, and Cabco became the West’s largest and oldest manufacturer of wooden shipping containers. The new boxes combined strength with lightness, forming an ideal container for shipping many products, ranging from agricultural produce to machinery.

The largest orders at the Arcata plant were for wirebound boxes, which became the number one product in quantity. Unitized covers for orange crates, lettuce boxes and similar containers were the number two product. Cabco’s popular slogans were “light weight, great strength, simplicity of setup and handling” and “designed to fit—engineered to protect.” Up to 1950, the Arcata Barrel Factory still produced barrel staves and heads that were sent to San Francisco for assembly.

By 1950, the sawmill at the Arcata Barrel Factory produced box cleat lumber, and a drag saw fed a set of lathes that turned out veneer. These materials were assembled in the wirebound box department by many workers, men and women, on large assembly lines. Other larger cants from the sawmill went to the slicer department, where they were rapidly cut to produce orange crate covers and similar items made from thin sliced veneer.

In another department, logs were split and sawed on specialized equipment to form barrel staves and heads. The varied products produced by the mill totaled approximately sixty million board feet of timber each year. In 1950, about fifteen railroad cars left the plant each day, full of finished containers and parts that were assembled in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Julius John Krohn, or “J.J.” as he was known, came to Arcata in 1903 when the California Barrel Company began operations. In 1905, he became general manager, a post he held until the firm was sold in 1956. In civic life, he represented Arcata’s largest industrial firm for about fifty years, serving on many committees, including the Arcata Masonic Lodge (where he received his fifty-year pin), as a charter member of the Arcata Rotary Club, as an international representative of the Redwood Council of Boy Scouts, as a director of the Camp Fire Girls, as an original member of the Humboldt State College Advisory Board, and as a past president of the Arcata Chamber of Commerce.

Although Krohn was often in the public spotlight, many people remember him as a shy, quiet person who helped many others through the years. He died in Atherton in 1962 at the age of eighty-two. His daughter, Mrs. George Hitt, lived in Indianola. One of Fred Koster’s four daughters, Mrs. Stuart Miller, lived in Arcata beginning in 1936.

Other key personnel who served for many years at Cabco’s Arcata plant included Murrell Warren, personnel manager and superintendent; T. A. Groom, production manager; Rudolph Schott, engineer and draftsman; Dewey Dolf, timber purchaser and logging superintendent; Lloyd Dolf, camp foreman; Harry Krohn and Clark Taylor, purchasing agents; Robert Yegge, planning officer; Walter Sweet, business office; and Ernest Sweet, cost accountant.

Department foremen included Roland Barweger (wirebound box), Adrian Young (veneer department), William Hengen (sawmill), William Denning (truck shop), Lyle Lancaster and Cecil Turner (shipping clerks), Verne Weltz and Harry Wyatt (slicer department), Curley Bray (vegetable hampers), Harry Donahue (barrel department), Gus Westlund (logging operations), Frank Coleman (recovery), Jim Wyatt (kilns), Art Molander (heading department), Harry Parton (carpenter), James Fabbri (boilers), Clyde Johnson (welder), Fred Parton (stave department), Joseph Halbach (craveneer), Ralph Davis (electrician), Frank Knapp (office custodian), and Pete Brundin (woods and logging).

Office personnel included June Anderson, Josephine Marsh, Anna Nielsen, Lily Miller, Laura Stebbins, Mildred Costa, Bubbles Crivelli, Esther Pifferini Giuntoli, Mary Taylor, Effie Yegge, Mae Banducci, Lester Larsen, Don Hall, Gae Russell Moxon, Bruce Palmer, Lena Fornaceri Kovacovich, June Christie and Adele Nix Dolf. Myrtle “Jonsey” handled payroll for many years.

When Roddis Plywood, which had two sawmills in the area at the time, bought the Arcata plant in 1956, the company had plans to manufacture wooden products. However, those plans failed to materialize, and within two weeks of the purchase, the entire Barrel Company operation in Arcata shut down permanently. One of the main reasons was that wooden containers were being replaced by cheaper paper alternatives.

Roddis Plywood sold out to Weyerhaeuser in 1961, and in 1965 the Arcata Redwood Company acquired the Arcata plant. Today, Arcata Redwood, which employs fifty-four people at the site, operates an Industrial Products Division on the grounds of the former California Barrel Company. The company manufactures items such as cigar material, parts for recreational homes, shelves for outdoor barbecue sets, decorative window components, drawer sides and slats for tray tables.

In August 1978, Lt. Clyde Johnson, a former employee then with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, proposed a reunion of former Arcata California Barrel Company employees. On Aug. 26, 1978, the reunion drew 262 attendees and was considered a great success. Albert Ghilarducci was honored for forty-four years of service, and Grover Waldroop, age ninety-one, was the oldest attendee.

Four women were honored guests: Louise Krohn Hitt, daughter of J.J. Krohn; Mrs. Murrell Warren; Edith Krohn, wife of Harry Krohn; and Effie Yegge, wife of Robert Yegge. The next reunion was scheduled for Aug. 2, 1979.

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The former Cabco plant makes up the bulk of what is called “The Barrel District” in the current Arcata General Plan (here highlighted in green). A subset of the “Gateway Area,” the Barrel District is zoned to accommodate the tallest future apartment buildings in the city.