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    Paradise
    Paradise
    Paradise
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    Paradise

    By Robert Colby

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    About this ebook

    It was more than 150 years ago that Uncle Billy" Leonard took refuge from the hellish heat in the shade beneath a Ponderosa pine, breathing in relief to his companions: "Boys, this has got to be Paradise!" Or so the story goes. Yet it is no fiction that the settlement grew to be more than just a stop on the way from Oroville or Chico to the gold country. Although Paradise was surrounded by mines, it had little gold itself. Disappointed miners made a living cutting timber, working at one of the sawmills, or hacking out homesteads in the foothill forests. Diamond Match Company built a railroad to its sawmill, locating the depot a mile west of town in what was sometimes called "New Paradise." For generations before houses began to replace its orchards, Paradise was an apple-growing center, home to harvest festivals that are echoed in today's annual Johnny Appleseed Days."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439634028
    Paradise
    Author

    Robert Colby

    Robert Colby was the author of more than a dozen crime thriller novels and short stories, most notably The Captain Must Die. Some of his other works include The Deadly Desire and Murder Mistress. He was also a prolific contributor of short stories to Alfred Hitchcock magazine and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine—many were later published into two anthology collections. 

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      Book preview

      Paradise - Robert Colby

      should.

      INTRODUCTION

      Boys, this has got to be Paradise. So said William Uncle Billy Leonard as he leaned back, relaxing in the shade of a ponderosa pine. He and his crew had just driven their wagons up the ridge from Oroville in the heat of a summer day. Is that how Paradise got its name? Could be; it’s as good a tale as any. Uncle Billy was not the first to settle in what became known as Leonard’s Mill, but around his sawmill formed the first community of any significance. Today it would be at the intersection of Clark and Elliott Roads.

      Another oft-told tale about the name is that there was a watering hole called the Pair ‘O Dice Saloon. Apparently there was such a saloon, but pioneer Francis Fannie Breese said the story that the saloon was the inspiration for the town’s name is not true.

      The community officially became Paradise in 1877 when it got a post office. Later when a new center of town sprang up around the railroad depot to the west, the original community became known as Old Paradise or Old Town.

      The term the Ridge often refers to the geographic feature starting below Paradise, where the foothills meet the flat Sacramento Valley and extend at least up to Inskip, 20 miles above Paradise. However, in this book it is arbitrarily placed at the upper boundary where the northern Paradise town limit abuts Magalia. The eastern limit is the west branch of the North Fork of the Feather River, aptly called the West Branch. The western limit is Butte Creek Canyon. The reader should be aware that this is less than a comprehensive history of Paradise; coverage depended upon the available photographs and space.

      For perhaps 10,000 years, the Paradise Ridge was home to the Maidu Indians. They lived in autonomous groups best referred to as tribelets. A tribelet usually had a major camp site and seasonally ranged over an area up to 50 miles in extent, determined by food sources and water. The Maidu were hunter-gatherers whose survival depended on their understanding of nature. They lived on the Paradise Ridge during the summer and fall when acorns, grass seeds, insects, deer, and small game were plentiful. They left limited physical evidence that they were here.

      In 1808, the Spanish passed through Butte County, and by 1829, American trappers were exploring the foothill streams. In 1849, the gold rush changed the county and state forever. Even though it was in the midst of the northern mines, Paradise played a minor role in the gold gush. There was gold in abundance above Dogtown and in the canyons on both sides but virtually none in Paradise. One just passed over the Ridge on the way to the mines.

      In the 1850s, there was a trading post and ferry at Nelson Bar on the West Branch. Below the Ridge in the Mesilla Valley, Manoah Pence built a ranch, hotel, and store. In Butte Creek Canyon there were Diamondville, Centerville, and other mining camps.

      In the 1850s, Sam Neal blazed the earliest primitive road up the Ridge, from his Mexican land grant in the valley to his sawmill along Little Butte Creek, about a mile south of Dogtown. By the mid-1850s, Oroville-Honey Lake Road passed through Pence and climbed the east flank of the Ridge to Dogtown and beyond. It was later called Pentz Road in Paradise.

      It was not until the mid-1850s and early 1860s that people started to settle in the area that would become Paradise. Initially these were miners who did not strike it rich. Giving up gold mining for farming, John Ware and his wife, Hannah, were among the first to homestead land. Farming and harvesting the Ridge’s dense forest became the local occupations of choice. Every family raised vegetables, fruits, and grains, along with hogs, a cow or two, and a few chickens for their own use. Any excess was bartered to neighbors or sold to the miners.

      Uncle Billy Leonard’s sawmill, near the Oroville-Dogtown Road in the vicinity of today’s Clark and Elliott Roads, is the best-remembered mill and the early community was called Leonard’s Mill and later Old Paradise or Old Town. The road was renamed for Elisha D. Clark, who operated the first stage line on the route to Dogtown (Magalia in 1863), Lovelock, Powellton, and Inskip and on to Susanville.

      Leonard’s sawmill was used as a refuge for neighboring families during the Indian conflicts of the 1860s. In a desperate attempt to reclaim their traditional lands and to avenge violence done to them, Native Americans resorted to theft, arson, and murder. The whites reacted by killing virtually any Native Americans they could find, guilty or innocent. Both sides believed retaliation was morally justified.

      Charles Delaplain, another early settler, is best remembered for the land he donated in 1861 for the first schoolhouse and the ditch he dug from Little Butte Creek to his 160 acres south of Dogtown. Brothers William and James Dresser and their families came in the 1860s. Letters written by James provide a window into what life was like in early Paradise. Dresser descendents still live in Paradise, but James moved on when freezing weather, and later drought, killed his crops.

      By 1877, Leonard’s Mill had about 80 residents and got a new post office named Paradise. John Strong, of another pioneer family, was postmaster. People continued to move onto the Ridge, one of the more notable being William E. Mack, M.D., who besides being the Ridge’s doctor, first recognized that the soil and mild climate would support commercial agriculture. In 1877, he planted 65 acres of olives and built a processing plant. His Highland brand of olives and olive oil was produced into the 1940s.

      At that time, people in other parts of Butte County considered the settlement as just a place (sometimes referred to as Poverty Ridge) a person traveled through to get to the mines and timber at higher elevations. Living may not have been easy, but

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