Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Loleta, CA

Loleta is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Humboldt County, about 15 miles south of Eureka at an elevation of just 46 feet near the Eel River estuary.

The town was originally called Swauger, or Swauger's Station, after local landowner Samuel A. Swauger, and it was renamed Loleta in 1897 — a name traced to lalōekā, the Wiyot name for the trail along the top of nearby Table Bluff.

European settlement began in the early 1850s in Wiyot homeland; potato farming dominated until the 1870s, when depleted soil pushed farmers into dairying, which still shapes the local economy.

The Eel River and Eureka Railroad reached Swauger's Station in 1883, the post office opened in 1888, and the Humboldt Creamery plant opened in town in 1893; the line was completed through to San Francisco as the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in 1914.

Loleta was long famous for its cheese factory — the Loleta Cheese Factory operated for 37 years as a popular Highway 101 stop before facing foreclosure and closing in 2019.

The 2020 census counted 828 people in Loleta, up from 783 in 2010, living in 361 households averaging 2.29 people; renters slightly outnumbered homeowners, with about 51% of occupied homes renter-occupied.

Local children attend Loleta Elementary School, a public K-8 school, and Loleta is the seat of the Loleta Union School District.

Two Humboldt County parks sit nearby — Crab Park on the Eel River estuary and Table Bluff County Park at the base of Table Bluff — and flocks of Aleutian cackling geese now use the Loleta fields as a spring staging area, sometimes numbering over 400 birds in March.

The Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria is headquartered in Loleta, where it operates the Bear River Casino.

Loleta doubled as a movie town: scenes for the 1982 horror film Halloween III: Season of the Witch were shot in a former milk bottling plant on Loleta Drive.