Autograph Letter Signed. Eureka, Humboldt Bay, California, Oct. 17, 1857. 2pp. To Hon. J.W.Denver, Washington, DC. With original mailing envelope; and Document Signed by A.W.Hanna, Deputy County Clerk, Humboldt County, “Total number of votes polled in Humboldt Court, at the General Election held on the 2nd day of September, AD 1857”. 1pg. with Humboldt Court seal affixed.
When he received this letter, California pioneer James W. Denver had just ended a term in the U.S. Congress, and would soon be appointed Governor of “bloody” Kansas Territory (which included the future Territory of Colorado, where a new city would be named in his honor). Forty-Niner Caspar Ricks, most prominent citizen of Eureka, wrote Denver as a man of influence in Washington, asking that the distributing US Post Office of Humboldt County should be located in his city, where 187 votes had been cast in the last election, far more than in any of the other six towns (Union, Bear River, Eel River, Salt River, etc.) listed on the enclosed document. Ricks felt confident that the great majority of County residents favored Eureka over Union, the next largest town, with only 136 votes. Besides, Ricks had taken out a sail boat to prove that the mail Steamer Columbia could not reach the Union Wharf at low tides, and it was a “great injustice in compelling us to wait for our mails until the Steamer delivers them in Union.”