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In the late 1800s, the green gold of California's inland timber belt included the long-coned sugar pine and cinnamon-dusted ponderosa pine of Big Chico Creek Canyon. Tucked into the steep terrain of present-day Butte and Tehama Counties, the bustling West Branch Mill logging operations moved timber from the foothills east of Chico to waiting markets in Sacramento, Marysville and San Francisco. Local author Andy Mark recounts the lesser-known history of the West Branch Mill, recalling a time when resident physician Newton T. Enloe treated the daring men who faced daily peril, John Bidwell's bumpy and sometimes treacherous Humboldt Wagon Road was essentially the only route to town and Big Chico Creek was lined with an elevated flume running lumber and ambulance rafts.
Before the completion of the transcontinental railroad, there was the Chico and Humboldt Wagon Road, meant to connect California with the burgeoning mining industries of Nevada and Idaho. The ambitious plan to make Chico a major Northern California transportation hub was spearheaded by John Bidwell and began in earnest in 1864. The road opened new areas to mining and logging and provided opportunities for less scrupulous characters. Stagecoach robberies, murders and shootouts were just some of the misfortunes that occurred on the road, along with the dangers nature provided--snowstorms, perilous terrain and grizzly bears. Author Andy Mark offers a glimpse of what it was like for nineteenth-century travelers and settlers on the route of the Humboldt Wagon Road.
Valuable as these volumes are in relation to railroad operations in Nevada and California, their usefulness as authoritative reference sources embraces a much broader scope. Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California is as much a history of the region as it is a study of the railroads. The principal mines and mills and their production are scrupulously detailed, together with the personalities who created them. The final volume in the complete history of Nevada and Eastern California railroads David Myrick's monumental railroad histories have become essential reference works for railroaders, historians, and hobbyists. Volume III contains additional information about the northern roads, including some not covered in previous volumes, and about developments since the publication of the first two volumes in the railroads of the region. It provides new facts gleaned from the correspondence of Collis P. Huntington, one of the builders of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. It also covers roads connected with the lumber industry and the construction of electric power plants, and Southern Pacific branch lines, including some that never advanced beyond surveys.
The West Branch of the Feather River in northern Butte County was once a rich mining region. In 1859, an incredible 54-pound gold nugget washed from the flanks of Sawmill Peak, named for the ridge's other main industry, logging. An intricate web of stage roads, and later railroads, linked the little mining and lumber towns that dotted these peaks covered in giant white and ponderosa pine. Steam engines hauled huge logs to mills like the Diamond Match Company, crossing steep canyons on wooden trestles stretched to heart-stopping heights. Some early mining towns like Magalia (once known as Dogtown--site of the gargantuan nugget) and Stirling City, are still there. Others like Nimshew, Lovelock, Toadtown, Powellton, Chaparral, Coutelenc, and Inskip, are ghost towns, inhabiting only the photographs that memorialize their short heyday.