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Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery Cultural Landscape

A group of people stand on a walking platform that surrounds an aboveground earthen pond beside Hatchery Building
Above ground earthen pond with walking platform around rim, north of Hatchery Building with the filter house (rock filter) in background (no date).

NPS / Laidlaw Photo Collection

The National Park Service preserves cultural landscapes to reflect a significant period in history. Historic architecture experts and other specialists research a site, including how it was used and changed over time, in order to recommend ways to preserve the landscape. The research and recommendations are published in a Cultural Landscape Report (CLR). CLRs use past documentation and current guidance to care for a landscape into the future.

Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery is one of only three surviving historic hatcheries in California. The Cultural Landscape Report for this site helps Redwood National and State Parks manage access and use, while protecting unique historic features.

History of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery

A Brief History of California Hatcheries, 1871-Today

Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery was built in the 1930s, one of 150 hatcheries built in California between 1871 and 1946. Today, only three remain. Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery also has historical integrity, meaning enough physical features remain from its period of historic significance to exemplify the era.

A long, one-story hatchery building between a road and a hillside covered by trees.
Hatchery Building and Superintendent’s House from Highway 101 in 1937.

National Archives and Records Administration (California Fish Hatcheries Negative 8149)

The state of California has historically used fish hatcheries to promote sport fishing. In response to overfishing, state and national agencies supported the development of hatcheries in the late 1800s and into the 1900s.

Pre-World War II hatcheries were small, low-tech facilities. They were mostly funded by fishing licenses and fees and were built to release small fish and stock into streams for sport fishing. Initially, hatcheries depended on railroads for shipping and supplies, but the adoption of trucks in the 1900s meant hatcheries could be farther away from rail lines. Employees who worked in these often-remote locations required worker housing.

After 1947, hatcheries were built as mitigation for dam construction and were paid for by federal and state agencies. They were larger, highly mechanized, and depended on huge amounts of electrical power. The new hatcheries were designed to raise fish to a larger size before release. They also included less worker housing.

Hatcheries continue to play a role in the response to habitat degradation caused by logging, mining, and dam construction.

The Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery Landscape

The existing Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery was constructed in 1936. The hatchery facilities during this period included pipelines, a hatchery building with troughs and tanks, outdoor ponds for growing fish, and a diversion dam and reservoir to bring water from Lost Man Creek to the facility.

The site also included two (possibly three) houses, a dorm, water tanks for the houses, a garage or shop, and sidewalks. The buildings were utilitarian with minimal decoration, constructed by local carpenters using redwood from the area. The site was landscaped with flowers, ornamental plantings, and lawn, which were important amenities for the employees and their families who lived there.

One-story wooden buildings, red with white trim, are clustered in a level grassy area with a tree-covered hillside in the background
The Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery was built at the confluence of Prairie Creek and Lost Man Creek, where the water conditions were ideal for hatching fish and the area's steep, forested hillsides gave way to a flat area for building. Redwood trees from the forest provided materials for construction (2011 Cultural Landscape Inventory).

NPS

Hatchery employees raised silver and king salmon, cutthroat, rainbow, and steelhead trout. The first step was collecting eggs from wild salmon. Salmon swam up the creek and were trapped by the dam. They were dipped out, examined, and, if ripe, eggs were removed from females and spawned from males in buckets. Harvested carcasses were left for bears, and fresh carcasses were eaten by the staff or given away.

Employees transported the fertilized eggs to the hatchery building troughs, where they set them into specialized baskets with holes. Workers turned the baskets until the eggs hatched. When the "fry" grew to "fingerlings," the workers transferred the fish to outside tanks to keep growing. When the salmon were big enough, workers scooped them into milk cans with aerators, loaded them into trucks, and released them into streams in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. By 1949, the fish were transported in a special tank truck.1

Because the hatchery was not modified after 1946, it is a rare example of the period of intensive manual labor. Mechanization became typical in later years. After World War II, intense logging deteriorated Lost Man Creek, which slowed hatchery production. The state determined that the facility was outdated and closed it in 1956.2

Humboldt County then leased the property in 1958 and updated the hatchery. It operated until 1992. Although some of the historic features have been modified and other features were added, the landscape still conveys the historic character of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery from its pre-mechanical period.

Two people stand in a yard in front of the Assistant Superintendent’s House, near a garden bed, foundation shrubs, and turf.
Residents standing in yard between the Superintendent’s House and Assistant Superintendent’s House, seen in background (1943).

NPS / Smedley Photo Collection

Life at the Fish Hatchery

A small hatchery even in its prime, Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery employed only a handful of people. Because of its remote location, the hatchery had to house both workers and their families. Between five and eight workers lived on site with as many as 15 dependents.

Steven Paul Smedley was superintendent of the hatchery from 1943 to 1949. His son Glen spent his teenage years at the hatchery and provided valuable insight into life at Prairie Creek.

The entrance to Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery from Redwood Highway led to a circular driveway between the hatchery building and the three houses. There was a planting bed with dahlias in the center of the driveway, a stand of second growth redwoods, and a flagpole with a cross bar for two flags. As Glen Smedley recalled, a clothesline and garden were south of the houses.

Two big redwood trees were cut down and removed during that time. A very large stump outside the north end of the shop was overgrown with Cecil Bruner roses planted by the Smedley family. Rhododendrons flourished around the property, fertilized with salmon carcasses. Steven Paul Smedley built a small smokehouse on the west side of the creek, south of the pipeline, though the exact location is unclear. An underground pipe carried smoke from the smokehouse to the residences.

The westernmost of the three houses was occupied by the Smedleys (two adults and four children, two boys and two girls). The Laidlaws lived in the middle house, with five children. There was a young couple in the third house, and a single man lived in the cabin across the creek.3

A group of one-story structures form a perimeter around a courtyard, with flower beds, a flagpole, and a car parked in front of a residence.
Original entry view to the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery from Highway 101, circa 1943.

NPS / Smedley Photo Collection

A Changing Landscape

In the later half of the 1900s, there was an effort to improve operations at the site. The county added water features as the purpose of the hatchery shifted toward education. Around 1962, the planting bed in the center of the courtyard was replaced with a rectangular “dedication pond," intended to show visitors the types of fish grown at the hatchery.

Today, although the overall spatial organization of the site and the original architectural style of the buildings are still evident, many of the features are no longer there. One buildng no longer exists, and others were altered. Most of the water supply system for the hatchery has been lost. The original dam was removed in 1989 and much of pipeline collapsed in a flood.

Few original historic plants remain, but the lawn areas, rhododendrons, and locations of other ornamental plantings help to define the historic landscape.

Original Entry View from Highway 101

One-story buildings form a perimeter around an area of lawn and asphalt. Some shrubs grow at the foundations and a pond is in the center. One-story buildings form a perimeter around an area of lawn and asphalt. Some shrubs grow at the foundations and a pond is in the center.

Left image
Original entry view documented for the National Register in 1996.
Credit: NPS

Right image
Entry view in 2019, documented for the Cultural Landscape Report.
Credit: NPS / University of Oregon

Note that the third dwelling beyond the Assistant Superintendent's House was lost by 1996 (rear right). The flower bed and border, evident in the 1943 photos, were later altered and replaced by a dedication pond with juniper plantings (center of 1996 photo). By 2019, the pond is overgrown with blackberries. 

Redwood National Park

Redwood National Park was established in 1968, increasing tourism and sightseeing to the area. In addition to operating as a hatchery, employees educated people about the hatchery's history and function. Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery received thousands of visitors and was a regular part of school field trips in Humboldt County. In addition to functioning as a hatchery, employees educated visitors about the hatchery's history and operations.

Concrete walls form a channel in a hillside, beside a set of stairs and surrounded by vegetation.
The concrete fish ladder from Lost Man Creek was built around 1973 to enable returning salmon to reach the new rectangular concrete tanks at the hatchery.

NPS

In 1998, several years after the hatchery closed, ownership was transferred from the California State Department of Fish and Game to the National Park Service. The NPS maintained the property and landscape. The buildings were “mothballed” in 2001 to help preserve unused structures that were not in use.

In 2011, NPS preservationists and partners like HistoriCorps stabilized the hatchery building, which was weakened due to wood rot, by painting and repacing damaged materials. and conducted a Cultural Landscape Inventory to better document the property’s landscape features.

Preserving the Hatchery

The Cultural Landscape Report

A common saying in historic preservation is the best way to preserve a place is to find a use for it. However, modern standards - like those for safety, accessibility, and electricity - may require modifying the historic property. Guiding documents such as Cultural Landscape Reports (CLRs) and Historic Structure Reports (HSRs) identify what is historically important. A CLR documents the history and existing features of a landscape, evaluates change over time, and provides recommendations for landscape preservation. In short, it helps a park to understand what is important in a landscape and how best to take care of it.

Cover of the Cultural Landscape Report for Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery
Cover of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery Cultural Landscape Report, prepared in 2020 by the University of Oregon Cultural Landscape Research Group for the National Park Service.

NPS

In addition to renovating the historic structures, the CLR recommendations address the importance of small details. These include a sidewalk or fence; the wider view, such as the arrangement of structures and open space; and the sense of a shared community space where life and work intersected. Combined, attention to these elements helps to maintain the historic character of the hatchery.

Cultural Landscape Reports can also suggest uses and ways to modify a site for a modern use, while preserving important features. For these recommendations, preservation experts conduct research and hold staff and community workshops to identify a need or potential use.

The process of preparing the CLR engages groups and individuals who are connected to a place. These groups are encouraged to take leading roles in implementing the preservation recommendations. This makes a historic place more relevant and useful to present-day communities as they contribute to decisions about use, put the planning in context, and imagine outcomes of ongoing work.

Following the CLR’s recommendation, Redwood National and State Parks is rehabilitating the historic buildings as meeting and training spaces for the park, tribal partners, and park rangers nationwide. This work is in collaboration with the Yurok Tribe and the NPS Historic Preservation Training Center (HPTC).

The success of the CLR, and the interest it has sparked in Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery, also led to the commission of a Historic Structures Report for the Hatchery Building and Garage. In the future, these improvements to the site and hatchery building may support a collaboration between the NPS and the US Air Force Response Team, a disaster response team, to carry out needed improvements while providing training in a historically-sensitive manner.

Landscape Features

A labeled site plan shows landscape features of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery in 1943 A labeled site plan shows landscape features of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery in 1943

Left image
Period plan shows the landscape in 1943.
Credit: Univerisity of Oregon / NPS

Right image
Existing features of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery, documented for the 2020 Cultural Landscape Report.
Credit: Univerisity of Oregon / NPS

The Cultural Landscape Report provides a record of the historic landscape, documention of conditions in 2020, and planning for future preservation treatment. This comparison shows that the overall configuration of the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery landscape is similar to its 1943 appearance, despite some changes. (See pages 37 and 50-51 of the CLR for more details.)

A garage and house with a porch face a flat, open area with a paved walkway
Garage and Assistant Superintendent House Porch in 2019. The buildings at the hatchery were typically utilitarian in appearance with minimal decoration, clad in ordinary rustic
siding. Portions of the walkways that connect parts of the landscape date to the historic period.

NPS / University of Oregon

Through research, documentation, and preservation, Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery’s physical landscape can continue to interpret and convey the early history of fish hatcheries, while its buildings are brought back into use for living and working.

As part of the historic preservation process, the CLR has been a tool for understanding the past, present, and future of this landscape.

Three people site on a wooden loading dock on a hatchery building. The man is holding fish of varying size on a line.
People sit on the loading dock of the Hatchery Building, ca. 1943.

NPS / Smedley Photo Collection

Notes

1. Smedley, Glen. Crescent City, CA. Telephone interview with Michael Corbett. 29-31 October 1996. Glen Smedley is the son of Stephen Paul Smedley, superintendent of Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery between 1943 and 1949 (pg. 21 of Cultural Landscape Report).

2. National Park Service. Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery Cultural Landscape Inventory. 2011. (pg. 17)

3. Smedley, 1996.

Tags

Redwood National and State Parks

Last updated: June 27, 2024