"Ten Miles Of Roadside Archaeology Along The Old Humboldt Wagon Road"

In late August 2016 a fire began off Highway 32 at Santos Ranch Road, south of Forest Ranch, which eventually burned 88 acres, including the south rim of Upper Bidwell Park. According to former Chico State University professor Gregory White, co-owner of Sub Terra Consulting: Archaeology and Paleontology, several public trails sustained damage.

White identifies four "cultural resources" that are "eligible for the California Register of Historical Resources," including portions of the Humboldt Wagon Road (built by John Bidwell). White's project report, aimed at the rehabilitation of the area, provides detailed documentation of artefacts, including wagon tire ruts and even "a distinctive Coors 7-ounce can with a double church key opening, one of the very first aluminum beer cans made, dating to 1958-1959."

As those affected by the Camp Fire wrestle with the enormity of the destruction, we must not forget the past. As a model of how it might be documented, White's project is given a lively and accessible historical context in "Ten Miles Of Roadside Archaeology Along The Old Humboldt Wagon Road" ($19.95 in paperback from the Association for Northern California Historical Research, anchr.org). 

The book, with hundreds of images, features contributions from ANCHR writers Nancy Leek (on Bidwell's vision for the Chico and Humboldt Wagon Road, "open for business in 1863" as a toll road), David M. Brown (on the lure of mines; and a stage ride to Quincy), Ron Womack (on the "Hooligans and Heroes" of Ten-Mile House; and Wakefield's Station, "a long day's horseback ride from Chico"). 

Josie Reifschneider-Smith, Publications Editor, writes on those who built the roadway and on Frank Bidwell Durkee, who, starting in 1919, pushed for improvements to the Humboldt Wagon Road.

Key to the book is public awareness of the destruction by inattention and vandalism of the rock fences, writes Reifschneider-Smith, "and the ruts carved into the tough volcanic bedrock by the iron-rimmed wheels of thousands of wagons and stagecoaches." A group called Respect The Walls (https://www.nvcf.org/fund/respect-the-walls/) is raising funds to preserve what has come before. 

When tears are dry, and Paradise rises, let us applaud local historians and archaeologists as they preserve our own collective memories.

"California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865

"Incomplete accounts," writes historian and retired Political Science professor Michele Shover,  "are a common problem in local history. For example, Butte County's violent clashes between settlers and Indians were treated as random 'one-off' events--intermittent atrocities sprinkled among accounts of Victorian-era 'happy talk.'" John Bidwell himself "suggested the effects of such events were peripheral distractions, not core experiences."

Over the last two decades Shover has worked with original sources in an attempt to tell a more nuanced story, analyzing "underlying causes, political issues, conflicts of interest, cultural assumptions. …" The result is a magisterial work of scholarship that is also immensely readable. "California Standoff: Miners, Indians And Farmers At War 1850-1865" ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) challenges assumptions and develops new historical understanding.

Meticulously detailed, with fifty pages of endnotes, the book's dozen chapters provide a riveting picture of the competing interests swirling around the community Bidwell founded. As Shover notes, "Politics was personal in nineteenth-century Chico, influencing social life and where residents spent their money." There are contemporary resonances everywhere.

Shover disputes what she calls Theodora Kroeber's "misanalysis of Maidu culture" and historical "distortions" all of which have implications for Kroeber's "Ishi In Two Worlds."

Shover also concludes that the Mountain Maidu raided the Mechoopdas working on Bidwell's ranch in the mid-1850s because they likely considered this "collusion."

Shover's research shows that many more Indians than the standard account of 32 died as they were resettled to Round Valley in 1863. "Primary documents disclose that close to 200 … died on the climb up the Coastal range mountain to the reservation." The record, she says, was "manipulated to shield the Army from its failure to deliver the Indians."

For the first time, Shover explains that these Indian deaths were not caused by the Army, but by "the most mortally dangerous type of malaria" that infected the group "while camped near Big Chico Creek in the summer of 1863."

The story Shover tells is one of violence since there were "no effective institutions in place that protected … against abuses." Her study, giving all sides their due, breaks new ground. It is indispensable.