II. Community Overview

A. The Service Area Definition

For purposes of the DRIS Initiative, the entire two county area of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties is defined as the service area. Humboldt and Del Norte Counties cover 2.9 million acres and are located in the northwest corner of California. They are bordered on the north by the State of Oregon, on the east by the rural counties of Siskiyou and Trinity, on the south by the rural county of Mendocino and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. Natural geography is of significance to the community as the Trinity Mountains to the east, the redwood forests to the south, and the substantial distance to the nearest urban community provide a degree of isolation to these communities. In turn, this has resulted in a high degree of self-sufficiency and cohesiveness. The closest major urban areas in California are San Francisco and Sacramento, both are a six hour drive to the South.

Humboldt and Del Norte Counties have a natural resources and tourism based economy. Although the natural resource industries such as timber and fishing have been shrinking, the service and retail sectors of the economy have been growing. Government services - primarily state and local government - employ over 23% of the population followed by retail sales and manufacturing. With a total 1997 population estimated at 154,840, Humboldt County has 79% of the region’s population. The largest cities in the region include Eureka (27,600), Arcata (16,400), Fortuna (9,975) and Crescent City (8,325). The unincorporated community of McKinleyville is also a fast growing area in the region with an estimated 1995 population of 13,500.

For community planning purposes, the Humboldt/Del Norte area was subdivided into smaller communities. Wherever zip code level data was available, data was developed for the specific community. For purposes of this report, a broader community overview is provided with specific community references provided when significant variation is observed.

The base map on page 4 and the table below show Humboldt/Del Norte’s zip codes without other data to help orient the reader to the geographic area represented by each zip code. (1996 zip codes provided by Geographic Data Technology). Only zip codes representing the physical location of a residence are mapped; post office boxes and rural delivery route addresses do not appear. Data for these zip codes are included in the nearest larger geographic zip code.

For the Southern Humboldt community, community members indicated that a significant amount of the normal medical service area crosses county boundaries into Mendocino and Trinity Counties. Thus, additional zip codes were added for a number of the community-specific data runs. However, they are excluded for the region-wide data.

A note about zip code analysis: We have attempted to provide current data by local zip codes whenever possible. However, as local communities grow, new zip codes are added which frequently makes it impossible to compare data over time. For example, with the rapid growth of McKinleyville, a new zip code (95519) was created for it in 1996. However, because the majority of health status and utilization was collected before that time, only estimations can be made for McKinleyville at this time.

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