Hitting Hamburg

Hamburg is no more. It’s abandoned now, but was home to 5,000 souls in 1880.

That’s when Sarah Totten took over the General Store from her brother-in-law, Dan Caldwell, who had opened the store in 1859. Sarah continued to run the store until 1930. The Great Depression and the ability to motor to a bigger selection of stores in Yreka, an hour east, probably did in the store.

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Today, all that’s left of Hamburg are a cemetery and decaying shacks that appear to date from Hamburg’s heyday.

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Phil and Jane Reedy stopped there on a scouting trip that included Lake Britton (see previous post). They concluded that it wasn’t a lack of fall color that made people move away. There’s lots of it near Hamburg which is located about 32 mi. east of I-5 on CA-96, along the Klamath River.

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The following morning the Reedys did some exploring where Hamburg once thrived.  Mary noticed a sign to the cemetery, which led to the Caldwell family plot.

Across the road from the cemetery is the “appliance graveyard” Reedy photographed last fall.

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Phil reported that the colors along Hwy 96 and the river from I-5 to Hamburg are just as he saw the previous day at Lake Britton with oaks showing auburn, carnelian, rust, terra cotta, lemon, gold, papaya, coral, pumpkin, butterscotch and tangerine.

The oaks are mixed with cadmium yellow bigleaf maple and Phil had to stop “about every 100 yards to take a picture and must compliment my wife for her patience.” Been there, done that.

By lunchtime, they’d worked their way back to Yreka for a picnic lunch at Greenhorn Park. From there, they headed to a friend’s ranch, just south of Yreka, to take photographs of Mount Shasta, then worked their way back to Weed, stopping at the Weed Golf Club for its views of Mt Shasta, bemoaning only that the volcano hadn’t yet been dusted with snow.

On their return to Davis, they stopped at the Simms bridge to discover that you can either photograph the bridge enveloped with color but backlit, or turn around and photograph Mt. Shasta rising above the Upper Sacramento River.

• Siskiyou County (2,589′) – Peak (75-100%) GO NOW