[1] It drains a rugged and sparsely populated region of the Yolla Bolly Mountains, part of the California Coast Range, in Trinity and Mendocino Counties.

[6] It rises in the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness at the crest of the Coast Range about a mile or so north of Wrights Ridge and west of The Knob, at the confluence of several small unnamed streams.

Turning south around Taliaferro Ridge at the Beaver Creek[7] confluence, it then runs southwest to where the Black Butte River enters from the left.

[5] In a 1965 California Fish and Wildlife Plan, the Middle Fork Eel River watershed supported an annual run of 23,000 Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in 178 miles of stream habitat.

William and James Foster--uncles of Walter, who lives in Barney Meadows--said that during the 1870s they found remains of beaver dams and stumps of beaver-cut trees along the creek.