“Bidwell Park: Personal Reflections And Casual Conversations About Chico’s Crown Jewel”

After he and partner Kate Roark moved to Chico in 2016, environmental educator Paul Belz looked for a memorial to the Hooker Oak’s collapse on May 1, 1977. 

“I only found a small stone structure with a metal plaque describing the Hooker Oak. Cars zipped past on busy Manzanita Avenue….. I wondered how many people remembered the great tree. Is it a ghost only rooted in a few peoples’ memories? If people forget about Hooker Oak, I fear they can also forget how important Bidwell Park is.”

Chicoans must never take the park for granted. And so, undertaking a years-long writing project, including three dozen interviews with those who love the park and a deep dive into the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission minutes from 1918 to the present, Belz has produced an enticing invitation to consider forces shaping the park.

“Bidwell Park: Personal Reflections And Casual Conversations About Chico’s Crown Jewel” ($19.95 in paperback from ANCHR, the Association for Northern California Historical Research, anchr.org) is an extraordinary and nuanced guide to 3670 square acres and their management.

After detailing park history, Belz considers “many visions for the park.” “Reader, let’s imagine going for a hike that begins in wild Upper Park. We follow Big Chico Creek through the more developed Middle Park, ending near downtown Chico in Lower Park. I show you places involved in some of Chico’s most contentious debates about the park.”

The key question looms over every chapter: “Does the park exist so people can have recreation, or should it be more of a nature preserve?”

Belz explains why a freeway crosses the park, considers Horseshoe Lake and guns, golf and beer, invasive plants, park volunteers, budgets, children’s education, homeless encampments, and the importance of remembering “that this is Mechoopda Maidu land and that tribal members see it as part of their home and their cultural heritage.”

As Belz and Roark hike the Yahi Trail in mid-May 2019, “Kate and I hadn’t seen many of the butterflies this spring, and we were excited to discover how many caterpillars had survived.” 

How to ensure the park itself survives? “One does what one can.”

"The Wildflowers Of Bidwell Park"

Renowned science educators Roger Lederer and artist-wife Carol Burr have the dirt on Bidwell Park. Or, more to the point, what grows out of that dirt. Their new collaboration is called "The Wildflowers Of Bidwell Park" ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing, available locally from Magna Carta, Mangrove Gift and Garden, ABC Books, the Bookstore downtown, Bird in Hand, and Made in Chico).

Earlier volumes include "The Birds Of Bidwell Park" and "The Trees Of Bidwell Park," but this project was a long time in coming. After consulting with local botanists, Lederer and Burr narrowed the list of some 800 flowering plants in the park down to 112 to illustrate, though more than twice that number are given a nod or a description.

Defining "wildflowers" as "typically short, showy, herbaceous and mainly annual plants" (including those accidentally or intentionally introduced), the book presents on each page a colorful illustration, name, origin, size, where in the park the plant can be found, and some interesting observations and history. Organized by color, this is not a comprehensive field guide but rather a revel in the beautiful and bodacious flowering park.

It's clear that picking the flowers is prohibited by California law, so the health benefits often described (along with the sometimes poisonous effects) are not intended as a dinner menu. In fact, at least with one common weed in the park, "Handle the plant and you will never forget Milk Thistle." Though, the book ads, "its seeds have been used as a coffee substitute and are sold in health food stores" and the plant is the emblem of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Now the Perennial Sweet Pea: There are "4 species of pea in the park," often seen near Big Chico Creek. The Common Soap Plant "was used by indigenous Americans after being pounded and mixed with water, its soapy mixture used as a stupefying agent and placed into streams to stun and catch fish...." The seeds of the Shepherd's Purse "when placed in water, supposedly act as a sort of fly-paper for mosquitoes, reputedly attracting and trapping them."

The book will attract readers to marvel afresh at even the tiniest inhabitants of Bidwell Park.

"The Trees Of Bidwell Park"

"John Bidwell ... planted a variety of exotic trees," writes Chicoan Roger Lederer. Subsequently many groups worked to maintain Chico's reputation as a "City of Trees." 

During a 1905 celebration thanking Annie Bidwell for the donation of Bidwell Park, she told those assembled that "a sadness has at time oppressed me as the thought has been borne in on me that some day the beautiful, beloved Chico creek would be destroyed by the diverting of its waters and the slaughter of its trees."

For Lederer, stewardship and awareness are keys to the preservation of Annie's legacy. To that end comes "The Trees Of Bidwell Park" ($19.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) with color illustrations by Carol Burr. It's a companion volume to the couple's "The Birds Of Bidwell Park" and is available locally from Made In Chico, Bird In Hand, the Bookstore downtown, ABC Books, and Magnolia Gift And Garden.

The book is dedicated to botanist Wes Dempsey, now retired, who "for over a half century has led trees tours of Chico." Think of this essential volume as a tour in print form of the park's tree variety. 

From trees found only on the university campus (considered by Lederer "the western end of the park"), to many common species found in upper, middle, and lower park areas, the entries are designed "to stimulate your interest in the tall, stately plants around you. ..."

The guidebook lists families of trees in the park, shows various leaf shapes, and provides a glossary and index to the trees. But the glory is in the trees themselves, each given a page showing its leaves and the tree's shape, along with a description, general location in the park, and interesting facts. Though not comprehensive, the listings help readers "see" more clearly what is all around them and too often taken for granted.

There's the Dawn Redwood, once thought extinct, which is found on the university campus. Then take the Pacific Ponderosa Pine, which grows throughout the park. "Some people describe the scent of the bark as turpentine-like while others smell vanilla or butterscotch; some find no smell at all."

Get the book, then marvel at the trees.