WAF- Not sure how many more mills were in operation when the NWP closed. The list of EUKA shippers in 1985 as reported in Stindt's NWP Volume 2 book contained the following (not counting the bulk cement dealer in Eureka):

Arcata Redwood, Brainard
Eel River Sawmills, Stone
Louisiana Pacific, Samoa-Korblex-Carlotta
Pacific Lumber- Scotia-Fortuna
R.H. Emerson (SPI)- Arcata (Manila)
Schmidbauer- Eureka
Simpson- Arcata

By the time I moved to the coast (September 1994), the A&MR had been shut down for over a year, Blue Lake Forest Products was reloading in the Costa Trucking facility, and Simpson trucked lumber from Korbel down to a reload built in an old mill at the stub end of what had been Humboldt Northern's Arcata branch, out on the bottoms west of town. Power for the "North Local" typically was the #70, and it sat in front of the L-P flakeboard plant during days, then ran at night. By that time, the cement and propane traffic was long gone...the Blue Lake reload at Costa was good for 2-4 cars a night, the flakeboard plant 6-10, Simpson 3-5, SPI 1-3, and Arcata Redwood 1-3. I didn't get south of Eureka much and as such didn't know much about carloadings on that end. The sawmill out in Samoa was sporadic at best, they would ship like crazy for a month or two then not ship anything for half a year or more. The North Local would meet the South Local working up from Scotia in the Eureka yards around 1-2 in the morning, swap cars, and start back north.

One of the other issues plaguing the railroad in the 1994-1998 time frame was that the soft condition of the roadbed after storm repairs would more often than not limit them to no more than 15-20 cars a day until things dried out...any more than that would trigger slipouts and landslides.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV