The California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport is a commercial service and military airport located in McKinleyville, California, a half dozen miles north of Arcata, California. In fact, it is often just called the "Arcata Airport", despite not being in Arcata, and Arcata not being the largest city in the region. The airport has regularly scheduled, commercial airport, currently going to several cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Nevada and Denver, Colorado. (Routes, of course, are subject to change). It is also a military airport, being the home of a United States Coast Guard Air Station, the only one between The Coos Bay Area and San Francisco. And along with the Coos Bay area airport and the Crescent City airport, the Humboldt County Airport is one of three airports with commercial service on the Pacific Coast, north of San Francisco.
Humboldt County isn't a great place to build airports, since almost everything in the county is either swamp/rocks next to the ocean, or steep hills prone to mudslides. The Humboldt County Airport is built on one of the few places it could be built, a large bluff/plateau in McKinleyville immediately above the mouth of the Mad River. The airport can be a little surprising, because it is just sitting in the middle of suburban McKinleyville (and McKinleyville itself is surprising, a little cluster of strip mall businesses and ranch houses a few miles from the twee landscape of Arcata). Airports have their own landscape: blocky terminals and labyrinthine parking lots, signs warning of serious consequences along with signs cajoling you with welcome, blank hotels that look like blank hotels all over the world---and this airport has that too, it is just shrunken down to size and places in some fields on the edge of an unincorporated city. The terminal building is the size of a normal grocery store. The parking lot is the same. The hotel, with all the class of a serious business travelling hotel, is smaller than most roadside motels in the area. It is a little block of featureless modernity, but two minutes later, you are back in the very local world of Humboldt County.
Humboldt County has a population of around 135,000 people, and many larger cities don't have airports with commercial service. But it is a long way from Arcata or Eureka to anywhere larger, so air travel is often the only practical way to leave the area. Along with that, the area is a destination from tourists from around the region, nation and world, so it makes sense to have a way to access Humboldt County quickly---although maybe not too much sense, because the region's main draw is its seclusion and access to environmental attractions--- both of which are compromised by the presence of air travel and even a small airport.
https://www.flyacv.com/