Residing in the historic Sangster-Watkins-Underwood House, the Trinidad Museum is divided into four main exhibit rooms, each centered around a different theme. The Native American Room features alternating exhibits on jewelry, basketry, regalia, and other artifacts from local tribes including the Yurok, Hupa, Tolowa, Karuk, and Wiyot. The Natural History Room showcases the region's geological and biological resources, with a particular focus on the local marine life. The Historical Photograph Room is home to a rotating exhibit that highlights subjects and events related to Trinidad's history. Lastly, in the Heritage Room, museum patrons can view objects and memorabilia concerning Trinidad's civic, social, and commercial past. Together these exhibits offer a comprehensive look into the history of this small coastal town.

The majority of exhibits showcased at the Trinidad Museum are not permanent. Check back in regularly to see what is currently on display.

Exhibits on Permanent Display

Below is a selected list of items on permanent display, which visitors can expect to see every time they visit:

1. The Muskogee Wood Stove - From the original Carson house on third street in Eureka
2. The Unique Fungi of the North Coast Display - freeze dried samples of local fungi
3. The Tide Zone Marine Life Collection - Specimens are arranged by the tide level at which they can be found in the environment
4. The Tsurai Village Model - Miniature replica of the Tsurai Village, complete with building labels
5. The Redwood Dugout Canoe - 800 pound traditional Yurok Canoe built by Axel Lindgren Jr. in 1986

Current Exhibits

Native American Room - Highlights of the Trinidad Museum's Basket Collection

The current exhibition in our Native American Room features highlights from the museum's basket collections. This includes caps from our extensive collection featuring our finest basket, the Queen James woman's ceremonial cap. In the large case we have displayed some of our most outstanding storage & gathering baskets as well as baby baskets, gift baskets, a wolf skin head band, and a Jump Dance basket. Our other semi-permanent exhibitions of the Tsurai village model, fishing nets and baskets, and women's dresses are also on display. Our Baskets for the Trade exhibit, planned for March of 2012, will expand on pieces from the current show.

On Display Until March 2012

Entry Room - Lee Taylor Walashek's Landscape Paintings

“It comes as no particular surprise that Ms. Walashek continues to return to Humboldt County and to Trinidad, especially. She was fostered in the home of Minnie and Dennis Shafer and blessed with 14 years of growing up in the most beautiful place in the world with the best ever town for her ‘village’.

Her work in oils, acrylic and watercolor are mostly landscapes which have found homes in Alaska, the length of California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Wisconsin. Winning awards and various color ribbons at the county fair keeps her competing and willing to show and share her work at various venues locally and San Diego, on periodic continuing bases. Otherwise her artworks can be viewed at her studio SOHOH, where orders may be placed for greeting and note cards, prints, and select originals. She has been known to barter even as she admits to gifting or purchases by family members.

Lee Taylor Walashek is most appreciative of the encouraging words and support of her family and friends. Her greatest encourager, Mr. Walashek, helps his wife to maintain her studies and her studio SOHOH, which is open for appointment, by phoning (707) 422-4994, between 10 - 4. Keep ringing or leave a message - they and their cats nap a lot.”

On Display Until May 2012

Heritage Room - J. Goldsborough Bruff Sketches

In the Gold Rush year of 1849, J. Goldsborough Bruff, then 43 years old, captained the Washington City Mining Company to California. It took his party of 64 men and boys and 16 mule-drawn wagons some five months to make the arduous journey. He made the trip for the adventure of it and with the purpose of writing the definitive account of the great journey.

Bruff's collected papers - his day-books, expanded notebooks, finished journal, maps, trail sketches, expanded drawings (based on those sketches), and, subsequently, his finished color paintings - without question constitute the most important body of historical documents pertaining to the great mid-Nineteenth Century overland emigrant migrations. They are a national treasure. The collection is divided between Beinecke Library at Yale University and The Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

On Display Until Summer 2012

Historical Photograph Room - Crannell: A Company Town, 1906-1969

Company towns were created throughout the western United States as a way of retaining employees in remote areas for the extraction of natural resources related to mining or lumber production. The key feature to these towns was that all housing, commercial buildings, and utilities were owned and operated by the company. Such overt control over the structure of these towns meant that the developing communities within them were highly dependent on the success of the company. Just such a town was located four miles south and about two miles east of Trinidad. First called Bulwinkle and later known as Crannell, this town existed for over six decades.

In 1906, a Canadian firm called Little River Redwood Company purchased 3,400 acres of redwood timberlands east of the mouth of Little River from John Bullwinkle. The rapid success Little River Redwood Company experienced in the first few years lead to the expansion of the mill and the overall growth of the town's facilities. As the company matured the town's population also grew, reaching its peak size of 135 residences in 1926. On four separate occasions the town played host to Hollywood adaptations of the book The Valley of the Giants.

By 1930 the Little River Redwood Company faced serious financial problems and by 1969, due to the decaying conditions of buildings and utilities, the last residences of Crannell were asked to leave their homes to make way for demolition. Crannell became a part of history.

On Display Until September 2012

Past Exhibits

Entry Room - Martha Kemp Botanical Drawings

Martha Kemp, an artist who specializes in the use of graphite pencils, has exhibited widely in the United States in juried as well as individual shows. Her drawings have received numerous awards, including one silver gilt medal and five gold medals from the Royal Horticulture Society's Westminster, most recently in November of 2007 for her drawings of "Special Plants" from the Green Diamond Resource Company's timberlands. Her work can also be viewed at sfnbotanicalart.com

On Display Until December 2011

Historical Photograph Room - Trinidad Whaling Station

Although the Trinidad Whaling Station was only open for 7 years, between 1920 and 1927, whaling had been a part of this region's history long before and would continue on after. Trinidad had been eyed as an ideal location for a whaling station since 1851. In fact, in the early 1860s a small station was set up in town. This didn't last long as whales were already becoming scarce. An effort to build a station in 1912 was approved by the Trustees of the Town of Trinidad but was sacked due to an outcry from local citizenry who feared that it would produce a terrible stench.

It wasn't until 1920 that Trinidad's whaling era really began when Fredrick Dedrick, a Norwegian master mariner and head of California Sea Products Company, convinced the people of Trinidad that his proposed station would be "sanitary and odorless at all times", a statement that proved to be most inaccurate. The slideshow below offers a snapshot of the station and the people who worked there.

On Display Until December 2011

Trinidad Whaling Station Exhibit