Klamath: The Town the River Keeps Taking
California
The town of Klamath sits where the Klamath River meets the Pacific in Del Norte County, and the river has never been entirely cooperative. The first settlement, Klamath City, was founded in eighteen fifty by Gold Rush prospectors pushing toward the rich placer deposits upriver, and the settlers did not stay.
The town rebuilt and moved several times. The great flood of eighteen sixty-two hit the north coast hard. Then in December of nineteen sixty-four, the Christmas Flood struck with record force: the swollen Klamath tore through the town and the Highway One Hundred One bridge. Klamath rebuilt again downstream, and the current town carries on as the southern gateway to Redwood National and State Parks.
