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Curry County is a land touched but lightly in history as written by the hand of man. Native Americans lived here in moderate numbers until the nineteenth century. Although a sprinkling of European seafarers touched the land earlier, relatively large numbers of immigrants from Europe did not began arriving until the nineteenth century. They quickly displaced the earlier inhabitants and, over the next two centuries, developed farming, fishing, mining and logging operations that supported small communities concentrated on the coast with tiny outposts in the interior along the several rivers. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, communication between these communities was difficult and accomplished primarily by sea. In the twentieth century an all-weather North-South road was finally established along the entire Curry County coast and all rivers were bridged. Today, Highway 101 is a major North-South thoroughfare. East-West communication continues to be extremely difficult and confined to a couple of gravel roads of uncertain reliability. Economically the region has suffered a serious recession in recent decades. Commercial fishing, logging and mining industries are in decline and the coastal communities are attempting to turn to tourism to support their economies. Much of the charm of the area is that these efforts at promoting tourism still do not have the same exagerated content as is sometimes found in more highly developed areas.
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