This part of a message posted yesterday has raised some questions. >Now Blocksburg is off the beaten path, but it is maybe twenty miles from >Harris. I suppose in 1884 there might have been a Justice of the Peace >in Blocksburg, but probably not today! For those interested, the towns of Harris and Blocksburg are on the "old road," once THE way to get to Eureka from the south. It was a prospering area in the late 1800s. Blocksburg first had a post office in 1877, named for Benjamin Blocksburger, who came to the area in 1853; spelling of the post office was changed in 1893. The town of Harris, less than twenty miles south, was named, it is said, for William C. Harris, who built a hotel there, and was postmaster in 1883, probably earlier. If you were driving north, passing through Laytonville, you left the present highway at the Bell Springs Road, (about 10 miles north of Laytonville) and then could take this road all the way to Bridgeport, on the Van Duzen River. (Let me add, there were, still are, places where you can leave this Bell Springs Road, (which later becames an extention of the Alderpoint Road) to get to Eel River valley.) The railroad, however, took a slightly different route, so (I'm sure most know) you last see the railroad from US101 at Longview (north of Willits) then see it next at Dyerville. The railroad crosses this "old road" at Alderpoint and at Fort Seward (depends on which fork you take along the way), passes through towns on a route that seems unlikely to us today, Dos Rios, Alderpoint, Fort Seward, Eel Rock and McCann before reaching Dyerville. My sources include Gudde's "California Place Names" and family notes and recollections. Memory may fail me on some of these points/places, so additions or corrections are welcomed. Ken Allard Fair Oaks, Sacramento County CA