Laura Perrott Mahan

Article Written By Emma Chapman

Laura Perrott Mahan used her prestige as a society woman to fight for the preservation of the redwood groves in Humboldt County and California in general, including in Redwood National Park. She was born Laura Perrott on November 29, 1868 near Loleta, California. Her mother, Sarah van Duzer, was a Humboldt County native, and her father, William, was an orphan who had worked his way from Michigan to California and become a prosperous farmer, able to secure his children an education.1

In the late 1880s or early 1890s, Mahan studied art at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco and began selling paintings from a studio in her parents’ home. In 1908, she married lawyer James Mahan. After her marriage, she, like many wealthy white women of the time, became highly involved in local civic and reform organizations. She was a member of the Eureka Women’s Club (which focused on education and forestry) and a member of John Muir’s conservationist Sierra Club. These two strands of her life—her participation in women’s clubs and her interest in conservation, guided her actions throughout the early twentieth century.2

Mahan was a keen organizer and fundraiser. Long before the creation of the male-dominated Save the Redwoods League in 1918, she and her fellow women’s club members enlisted Eureka City businessmen to designate local redwood groves as city parks, attracting tourists and protecting the trees from logging. In 1913, she helped form and became president of the Redwood Park Committee, which wrote a resolution, forwarded to the U.S. Congress, demanding that several redwood groves be declared a national park; they also collaborated with their congressional representatives and lobbyists in Washington, DC.3 She organized the influential Women’s Save the Redwoods League in 1919 to expand conservation advocacy and activism. In 1923, an undaunted Mahan organized a fundraiser among the Federation of Women’s Clubs to buy certain redwood groves to donate as public land.4

Mahan’s most famous act on behalf of the redwoods occurred in 1924. On November 10, loggers from the Pacific Lumber Company began working in a redwood grove that the court had protected from logging for the rest of the year. When Mahan heard about this, she rallied fellow female environmentalists, rushed to the grove, and, along with the other women, put herself between the machinery and the trees. Because of the women’s high profile in the community, the loggers were forced to stop while Mahan’s husband gathered the local media and filed an injunction against the company. The local community rallied around this cause and the grove was preserved.5

Mahan continued to be involved with the redwoods for the rest of her life. Once an artist, she had also become an activist. By the time she died in 1937, her work had helped preserve multiple groves of irreplaceable redwoods.

1 - “Laura Perrott Mahan,” Laura Perrott Mahan - Artist, Fine Art Prices, Auction Records for Laura Perrott Mahan (AskArt), accessed August 10, 2020, https://www.askart.com/artist/Laura_Perrott_Mahan/10035031/Laura_Perrott_Mahan.aspx; “Family Notes—March 2007: Humboldt County,” The Prrtt Society (The Prrtt Society, July 22, 2018), http://www.p-rr-tt.org.uk/Family%20Notes%20March07.htm; "United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DHRR-K6?cc=1438024&wc=92VK-BZY%3A518653701%2C518878201%2C518885501 : 7 June 2019), California > Humbolt > Table Bluff > image 3 of 11; citing NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Year: 1880; Census Place: Table Bluff, Humboldt, California; Roll: 66; Page: 393B; Enumeration District: 035

2 - "Laura Perrott Mahan," Laura Perrott Mahan - Artist Fine Art Prices, Auction Records for Laura Perrott Mahan (AskArt), accessed August 10, 2020, https://www.askart.com/artist/Laura_Perrott_Mahan/10035031/Laura_Perrott_Mahan.aspx; Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004, Year: 1900; Census Place: Table Bluff, Humboldt, California; Page 5; Enumeration District 0037; FHL microfilm: 1240087, https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?dbid=7602&h=32583457&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=6742; Ancestry.com 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006, Year: 1910; Census Place: Eureka Ward 3, Humboldt, California; Roll: T624_77; Page: 2B Enumeration District: 0009; FHL microfilm: 1374090, https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?dbid=7884&h=195029177&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=6061; Sam Hodder, “A League of Their Own: The Women Who Started Saving the Redwoods,” Save the Redwoods League, March 16, 2016, https://www.savetheredwoods.org/blog/a-league-of-their-own/; Alexis George, “Laura Mahan—A Giant Among Giants,” History's Heroines (Alexis George), accessed August 10, 2020, http://alexis-george.com/laura-mahan-a-giant-among-giants/;

3 - Laura Wasserman and James Wasserman, Who Saved the Redwoods: The Unsung Heroines of the 1920s Who Fought for Our Redwood Forests (New York: Algora Publishing, 2019), 20-21; 23-25.

4 - Sushmita Pathak, “The First California Women to Fight for the Redwoods,” OZY, November 22, 2017, https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-first-california-women-to-fight-for-the-redwoods/80441/; Alexis George, “Laura Mahan—A Giant Among Giants,” History's Heroines (Alexis George), accessed August 10, 2020, http://alexis-george.com/laura-mahan-a-giant-among-giants/; “Local Ladies History: Laura Perrott Mahan,” Clarke Historical Museum, December 16, 2018, http://www.clarkemuseum.org/blog/local-ladies-history-laura-perrott-mahan. Sam Hodder, “A League of Their Own: The Women Who Started Saving the Redwoods,” Save the Redwoods League, March 16, 2016, https://www.savetheredwoods.org/blog/a-league-of-their-own/.

5 - Sushmita Pathak, “The First California Women to Fight for the Redwoods,” OZY (OZY, November 22, 2017), https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-first-california-women-to-fight-for-the-redwoods/80441/; “Local Ladies History: Laura Perrott Mahan,” Clarke Historical Museum, December 16, 2018, http://www.clarkemuseum.org/blog/local-ladies-history-laura-perrott-mahan.

6 - Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004, Year: 1900; Census Place: Table Bluff, Humboldt, California; Page: 5; Enumeration District: 0037; FHL microfilm: 1240087, [https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll ; “Laura Perrott Mahan,” Laura Perrott Mahan - Artist, Fine Art Prices, Auction Records for Laura Perrott Mahan (AskArt), accessed August 10, 2020, https://www.askart.com/artist/Laura_Perrott_Mahan/10035031/Laura_Perrott_Mahan.aspx.

Acknowledgements

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This project was conducted in Partnership with the University of California Davis History Department through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, CA# P20AC00946

Part of a series of articles titled
Women's History in the Pacific West - California-Great Basin Collection.

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