Topic: Smoked Salmon in California

Edited 12/31/2013

Ocean-caught salmon in the North Coast Highlands culinary region of California comes from the area around three river mouths.  From north to south, they are the Smith, Klamath, and Mad Rivers.  They are spread out in a spatially uniform distribution along the region's coast, so that makes for an even distribution of salmon, except for the midpoints between any two rivers, where sources of salmon overlap.  Areas with overlapping sources of salmon means more salmon.  These points are also approximately where Trinidad and Crescent City (the two larger towns along the coast) are.

So why are the main two cities in the same areas where there are more salmon?  I would say that the current locations of Trinidad and Crescent City were indirect but definite results of the practice of smoking salmon in the area.  Native Americans (the Yurok, Tolowa, etc.) settled near those places because of the salmon.  When white colonizers came to the area in the 1800s, they started smoking salmon as well.  They had to find some type of food, and there was a lot of salmon in the area, so at least part of the reason they first lived in those places was the salmon.  These early settlements led to the formation of Trinidad and Crescent City.

Sockeye salmon.

In the next post, I'll move on to another culinary region in California.