California’s last remaining pulp mill stands at the center of Humboldt Bay, and remains this isolated region’s most conspicuous and majestic architectural feature. This mill has had at least seven owners in its 50-year history, and in 2008 was permanently shuttered during the last global downturn in the price of pulp for paper. Its final operator (the Chinese-based company Lee & Man) left a legacy of contamination not exclusively of its own making—including three million gallons of caustic chemicals, twenty thousand gallons of acids and corrosive sludge, along with PCBs, dioxins, lead, and asbestos both entombed in debris piles and under the ground. The EPA came to the rescue in 2013 and removed the most dangerous toxins, and the Humboldt Bay Harbor District now owns the site and has a plan to re-localize its economic activities. For now, the mill still has its magnificent stack—an enduring cenotaph for this region's inexorably diminishing industrial era. The Last Mill, © 2017, running time: 4 minutes.