Arcata Books was established in the late 1980s by Carlos E. Benemann, a notable regional antiquarian bookseller, UC Berkeley alumnus, and later mayor of neighboring Ferndale. Operating under the guiding ethos to provide "nothing but good books," the shop maintained a curated stock of used, out-of-print, and scholarly titles catering to students and faculty from nearby Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt) alongside local collectors. Benemann operated the shop in downtown Arcata through the 1990s before shifting regional retail bookselling operations toward Ferndale and Eureka, eventually closing physical storefront operations in the early 2000s.