DEAD BIRD

 …things wished undone…

I’d not hung out with Tommy very much. A roly-poly high school kid who hadn’t yet lost some of his baby fat, he was a shirttail friend of some of my pals. Funny, rarely. Serious, sorta. Athletic, not at all. Down to earth? Yeah. Maybe that. 

     His major asset may have been a century-old cabin I’d been told about. It was located an hour away in the Sierra at a gold rush era encampment called Jonesville. Set amongst some towering pines and backed by a fresh, burbling creek, about six miles past where the pavement ended, I only visited Tommy’s place once.

     

My Honda Trail 90 was nearly new. Buddy John’s older Trail 55 had miles on it and John would have made it but his Saturday lifeguard gig cramped his schedule. Buddy Duane had a more powerful 125, but its configuration didn’t lend itself to gravel or dirt roads and when we got to where the pavement ended, he turned back. I motored on not quite knowing where I was headed.

     Jonesville is little more than a collection of hammered together ramshackles, lit by candles or kerosene at night and warmed by cordwood in the woodstove that would also serve as the cook stove. Each place had an outhouse some distance away, old Reader’s Digests sometimes served as toilet paper. To find a particular cabin, one departed the main road that headed over Humboldt Summit. Every worn out  two-track intersecting that main road looked the same. I found Tommy’s on the third or fourth try.

     Dinner that evening would be hobo stew, a mix of ground beef, potatoes, bell pepper and onion wrapped in foil and tossed into campfire coals. Tommy had prepared four of ‘em, so there would be leftovers. He’d swiped some Brown Derby beer from his old man to wash things down a bit. With nothing to clean up, just aluminum foil to ball up, in the gathering dusk we set out so he could show me around.

     We hiked a few yards to the end of his shared road, Tommy talking about the families that would be his neighbors. Most had owned their cabins for generations, many built by a great grandpa or grand uncle. None would ever be for sale. Past the end of the two-track, a single track waded into grasses and mule’s ear. Not far beyond, a tiny creek – Scott John, I think it was called – gave melody to the meadow. A sinking sun offered alpenglow to the eastern hills as a three-quarter moon slipped over their summit. We each took a moment to unload some of that Brown Derby and then toed up the fisherman’s path on this side of the creek. Kid though I was, I was struck by the beauty and the balance of it all. So peaceful. So right. I’m not sure if I then believed in heaven on earth, but on the banks of Scott John, I might have experienced it.

     We came to a rounded outcrop of granite around which the little stream curled. There, the stream pooled. “We’ll catch us some trout here tomorrow for dinner,” Tommy said. “Cook ‘em the same way as tonight so there’s no dishes to do. You did bring that extra foil I asked for didn’t you?” 

     I shook my head. I think he must have asked John or Duane.

     “Well, shee-it. I’ll have to figure something out.”

     And I’m sure he did, but not that I’d remember.

 

Breakfast would be Cocoa Puffs or Fruit Loops, dry – “Just like the Indians ate ‘em” – then we were to go hunting.

     “I don’t hunt,” I said.

     “Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said as he slung a .22 over his shoulder.

     “What’s in season?”

     “Doesn’t matter.”

     “Doesn’t matter?”

     “Yeah. We’re just gonna do some target practice,” and he handed me a gunny sack with some empty Brown Derby bottles tinkling at the bottom.

     He banked the fire in the wood stove and we headed out. 

     Walking up the track that led back to the main road, he told me about Robber’s Roost, a couple of miles over the pass where somebody name Black Bart robbed the Humboldt Stage that ran from Chico to Susanville. “Did it more’n once they say. And he always left a poem. Weird, huh?” 

     Across the road, we hiked on soft, scented duff through a stand of evergreens for maybe a half mile. We came to the edge of a glade where the white, barkless hulk of an ancient yellow pine lay in the morning sun. 

     Leaning the rifle against a standing tree maybe twenty good paces away from the downed timber, Tommy told me to set some bottles “make ‘em a foot or so apart.” 

     By the time I’d lined up seven or eight, I heard Tommy rack a shell pointing the gun at bottle number one. And me. 

     “Hey!” I’m sure my utterance was involuntary.

     Lowering the weapon, Tommy grinned. “Get back over here. Let me show you this thing.”

     I’d handled a neighbor’s BB gun once or twice, and this didn’t seem much bigger. 

     Tommy explained how to put in the bullet and how to sight through the points at the end of the barrel. “Just make sure you point this” – he tapped the end of the barrel – “right at what you want to shoot. You should be able to hit it. It’s pretty simple.”

     I tucked the rifle’s butt against my shoulder and peered down the barrel scanning each of the bottles I’d set on the log. Which one would I choose?

The Oregon Junco is a little black-hooded bird a bit smaller than an empty Brown Derby bottle. Looking like a miniature medieval executioner, Juncos flit through forests and clearings feeding on seeds and only saying eetle, eetle, eetle. I’d seen lots of them on hikes with my dad. Part of the balance, Juncos are prey for foxes and red tail hawks and others. Including, this day, me.

     One lit at the end of the row of bottles. Tommy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “You think you can get that one?” 

     I didn’t think so, but I swiveled the .22 in the bird’s direction and squeezed off a round.

 

Looking back over seven-and-a-half decades, now, I am certain that there are acts I have committed that will justifiably condemn me to an eternity in hell. Lust. Avarice. Gluttony. But the sight of that innocent little guy simply collapsing out of sight off the back of that log without so much as a sound or a flutter must top the list. 

     Mouth likely agape as Tommy slapped me on the back and uttered words of congratulations, I handed him his gun, hiked back to the cabin, fired up my little Honda and – stomach hollow – headed home.

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

 

SOME BOOK MAGIC

 In praise of a good reference book…

…and a little kismet

 

For reasons I cannot recall, about a half century ago, I picked up a copy of Erwin Gudde’s California Place Names, the hardbound edition, at the used bookstore on Broadway in Chico…  

…Maybe because new it was listed at $15.95 but this one was marked down to $13.50… 

I’d probably picked it off the shelf and looked up Chico [page 62]… 

…then Paradise [page 238], then Butte Creek [page 44] and learning useful trivia about the origins of the names of the places near which I’d grown up.

 

The wisdom of that purchase was confirmed a few years later when I served as a Fourth Grade teacher in Durham [page 96]…

…and kept it on hand in the back of my classroom. At the conclusion of my reading Scott O’Dell’s classic Island of the Blue Dolphins to the class, one of my students asked if the island was real and what was it really called. Pulling Place Names from the back counter, the kids learned about San Nicolas Island… 

 

…and the Santa Barbara islands and a bunch of other one-thing-led-to-another- type stuff found in such a volume. After lunch recess, we always engaged in ten-minutes of silent reading. A little boy pulled the reference book from the back counter. He wanted to find out about the town where his grandparents lived. The next day another one picked it up.

 

Two or three years into my tenure as a fourth grade teacher, someone donated an aquarium to the class. (There’s a lesson here.) I gladly accepted it, and one Friday afternoon, set it up and filled it with water thinking that over the weekend the water would warm enough to be suitable for a goldfish or a guppy. Monday, I discovered not an aquarium filled with warm water, but a countertop backed with water-logged books. Including Place Names… 

…Tossing out some, having to pay for others, I kept Gudde’s volume knowing it was still serviceable once all the pages dried out. Yet, over the intervening fifty years, I’ve felt a pang of disappointment every time I leave through its crackly pages. So much so that I was always on the lookout for a replacement. I even purchased the 40^th Anniversary edition (2004) in paper, but that fell short of relieving my angst.

 

During those Durham days, I was a regular attendee of the Bidwell [John Bidwell, page 28 (entry) and 376 (glossary)] Presbyterian Church in Chico. I even served on their Session ~ the elective body that oversees policy for the congregation. The session was comprised of long-time members, many upstanding members of the Chico community: doctors, lawyers, university types, educators. Not sure how I qualified.

 

John Nopel, decades my senior, was one of ‘em. He and his wife always sat a few pews in front of me and the family I’d married into during my first attempt at matrimony. In reviewing his lovingly prepared obituary, it became clear that Mr. Nopel garnered many claims to fame beyond being an elder in the Presbyterian Church. A life-long member of Scouting, in 1934, he worked on the construction crew building Camp Lassen, the Boy Scout Camp where 54 years later, I wed [See Eden Indeed: Tales, Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy pages 210-15]. As a school principal, Mr. Nopel opened Chico’s Hooker Oak School in 1948 and later served as an associate superintendent for the school district before moving to the county office. Career coincidence found me a member of Chico’s Phi Delta Kappa educational fraternity with him, later employed opening two new schools (elsewhere) myself. But, perhaps, most significant, he was the heartbeat of the Butte County Historical Society maintaining files and photos of the earliest years of my old stompin’ grounds. His library of historic texts and references must have been exhaustive.

 

 

Why might I think this? A couple of weeks back, I engaged in another of those searches for a copy of my long-damaged book. To my surprise, AbeBooks so called ‘sellers of books, fine art and collectables’ had one listed. In excellent condition. Priced at  thirty-five bucks! (AbeBooks, it turns out, serves as a means for individuals to market their wares to an online audience. Note: I normally avoid shopping for books online.) Confirmation of my purchase came with a bit of information about the seller. Enough to tell me to whom this copy might have once belonged. The Chico address rang a bell.

 

The book arrived. The cover, sheathed in plastic perfect. The pages pristine. Side-by-side, it was an exact match for my waterlogged copy. I can’t say my throat didn’t constrict a bit.

 

That evening, I settled into a favorite chair with a thimbleful of favored scotch and began to thumb through. All the listings I’d referenced before were there as, of course, were entries about the new places I’ve explored…

 

…and before I knew it, an hour-and-a-half and fifty years magically dissolved.

 

Mr. John Nopel (1914 – 2006): Perhaps your greatest calling was that of teacher. Know that even now in 2025, you’re still in the business.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

CAMP LASSEN – BLAST FROM THE PAST III

 episode 3 in a weekend with extended family

 As coincidence would have it, on the evening of that very distressing day when the final decree for divorce from my first marriage was issued, I had been roped into being ‘entertainment’ for a Methodist Church family camp up the hill from Chico. There, I regaled the assembled with my impressions of Jimmy Stewart [everyone can do impressions of Jimmy Stewart] and my strumming of the ukulele [anyone can strum a uke; most are smart enough not to.] I don’t imagine that I was particularly entertaining. At some point, the minister asked the typical how’s it goin’ question, and man of God that he was, I gave an honest answer. Probably unexpected.

 Fast forward a few years and I am marrying the good reverend’s daughter at that very camp.

 

 

Thirty-eight years later, almost to the day, said bride, my dear Candace, and I are returning from a Lake Almanor family weekend. We’d chosen to travel the scenic Deer Creek Highway and were doing so when she suggested we take a detour into Butte Meadows and then up the gravel road to the Boy Scout Camp where it all began.  

 

The place had aged and the spirit seemed muted as the parcel was dotted with No Trespassing signs nailed to yellow pines, cedars and fence posts. A stroll through romance and memories would be out of the question this day. We turned around at the gate, but after a couple of hundred yards, the urge was too great. Parking by the side of the road, we hiked back to the gate and entered the property. Just this side of the three flagpoles on the edge of the Chico Meadows greenery, I hailed a young man. “Permission to come aboard,” I hollered. 

 The fellow may not have understood the reference, but he did kindly shepherd us to the grand old lodge fashioned of huge logs and timbers where we were graciously welcomed and – there being no young campers on site yet – invited to explore around a bit.

 Camp Lassen was established in 1933. (I’d always thought the main building was a product of the WPA.)  Sometime during the 1950s, a young camper named Billy Bernard attended, paddled an aluminum canoe in the pond, sipped water from pipe at the far end of the meadow – that spring being the source of Chico Creek – and located arrowheads crafted from flint and obsidian. 

In 1986, thirty years later and now the Superintendent of the Jamestown (Tuolumne County) School District where I would enjoy my first administrative placement, ‘William’ Bernard took the children of those attending out to find arrowheads and splash in the pond.

 

Out back of the lodge stands the staff cabin, suited for those who’d be living in Chico Meadows for a summer rather than simply a week.  

 

There, some miscreant attending our nuptials found it entertaining to stuff the wedding bedstead with pinecones and needles and a grotesque sculpted clay fish head. Something about which is still laughable.

 

 

Candi is the individual within our coupling that always wants to see what’s around the next bend. Time after time, she’s encouraged us to travel just a bit farther or explore just a bit more or edge across a line I might otherwise turn from. This was the case at Camp Lassen this year: 38 years later.  

 

I’m so glad she did because we were informed that the Lassen Area Scouting Council is putting the property up for sale. With Scouting in 21^st century decline, one wonders where the future Billy Bernards of the world will find their first arrowheads.

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

DRIVING THROUGH A LOST PARADISE

No ‘Shot of the Day’ Today

In general, I’m not a lookie-loo.  I may drop in on a realtor’s open house or sneak by a dealership to check out the next bike or pickup, but, in general, I have better things to do than gawk.

Today, however, after an 800-mile loop up the coast and through the Trinities, I found myself lodged at the foot of Mount Lassen intent on staying to the high country as long as possible before heading home. As a result, I would venture south on California’s State Route 32, edge east at Lomo Junction to Butte Meadows and catch the Skyway south to… uh oh… Paradise on my way down to Oroville and then across the valley to home.

Paradise holds special memories to me.  As a kid growing up in nearby Chico, a visit to the Pagoda restaurant in Paradise was a sign of high times.  The (Caucasian) waitress had flamingly dyed red hair and it took a six-year-old me quite a while to understand that all Chinese folks didn’t have flaming red hair.

Later, a gig in college had me delivering candy, tobacco and restaurant supplies to the little town on the ridge.  “Seven days without a hamburger makes one weak,” read the sign at Paul and Helene's Paradise Frosty.  And the spiral staircase behind Pinocchio’s lead to an awful place to store the wares I delivered.

During my first year of teaching, my wife and I rented at cottage at Acres of Paradise Mobile Home Estates on Pentz Road, near the hospital where my daughter would, decades later, birth two children.

The flumes.  The pines.  The dirt roads for exploration.  The small businesses serving treed neighborhoods.  All ripe for memories.  And disaster.

Heading south from Butte Meadows, the Skyway is recently paved.  A previous fire cut off escape routes and paving one in the opposite direction seemed wise.  The upper Skyway is a delight of rises and curves, forests and vista points, graveled fire roads and cabin sites.  The old pavement begins at Inskip, once a quaint waystation on the road to Humbug Summit, now, sadly, a decaying edifice painted red.  Twisting into Stirling City, Lovelock and DeSabla, through forests of pine and fir, crossing historic ditches that once fed timber to mills in the valley, it was easy to forget that which would appear over one rise and around one bend.

First, there were standing pines with needles permanently brown.  Then there was a stump.  Then a scorched homesite, charred concrete foundation, rusted washer and dryer.  Then another.  Then another.  And “Central Paradise" was still five or six miles down the hill.

I angled onto Pentz Road.  It would parallel the Skyway.  The plumbing shop where I’d delivered copper fittings was gone. Noble’s apple packing shed, gone. A cul-de-sac of newer homes was now a cul de sac of foundations and unkempt weeds.  Older homes along Bille Road were razed.  Clark Road also.  Clark had become the newer commercial core after I’d departed the area.  The new Safeway stood as burnt cider blocks filled with blackened rubble.  At a melted filling station, in the service bay, someone’s Dodge or Plymouth had just been hoisted on the rack for an oil change or brake inspection when the fire storm hit.  The lift still stands, bent and crippled with the mini-van perched on top.  Nearby an unscathed Assembly of God owes its reprieve to defensible space more than divine intervention.

I clocked the distance through which I rode through remains from above the old Magalia depot to the Paradise Airport. Erroneously, a sign reads: “Airport closed due to PG&E negligence.”  Nope. The airport is closed and an eight-and-a-half mile swatch of this great old town is gone due to a combination of factors: a lack of respect of the potential hazards at the urban-forest interface; a forest that struggles to remain healthy as climatological factors change; a windstorm the likes of which might be termed hurricane in the gulf, but we don’t have hurricanes in the Sierra foothills.  And, yes: overhead power lines.  Miles and miles of powerlines that successfully feed our insatiable appetite for convenient lifestyles – all of which are okay until something unthinkable happens.  

I mull all of this as I fit my motorcycle into a caravan of dump trucks and big rigs loaded with the aspirations of a lovely mountain community, slowly rumbling down Clark Road – their diesel engines humming a dirge – loaded with the crumbled remains of future dreams and the dust and ash of what once was.

I didn’t take pictures when I found myself driving through nearby Santa Rosa’s burnt out areas in 2017.  It felt like invading someone’s tragic privacy back then.  I didn’t stop for photos this day either. I didn’t want to be perceived the lookie-loo.

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

REVERIE IN THE RAIN

Walking in a welcome rain – 

A cool and drenching one – 

Quelling the flames at the rim of the fire

And dousing the smoldering rubble

Of forests and grasslands

And homes and life…

Walking in a welcome rain – 

A deep and satisfying one –

Rinsing soot and ash from all that remains

And soaking a hint of rebirth

Into forests and grasslands

And homes and life…

Walking in a welcome rain – 

A needed and nourishing one –

Inhaling sweet, unsullied air

And a cleansing sense of hope

Into forests and grasslands

And homes and life…

Walking in a welcome rain – 

A pure and freshening one –

Washing away our tears

And replacing them with rainbows

Over forests and grasslands

And homes and life.

A walk in that welcome rain –

A soulful and pensive walk –

Restores and renews,

Respirits and reminds us… 

What we’ve loved is never quite fully lost 

     so long as remembrance brings warmth    

     to our hearts.

So, when together we walk 

     in that welcome, needed rain, 

We again find Paradise.   

  

© 2018
Church of the Open Road Press

A “GRIM” FAIRY TALE

This grim little tale relates the story of a fire breathing dragon demanding tribute from villagers lest their settlement be destroyed. Rapt in fear a little man is pushed forward from the crowd.  

“What is it that you desire?” the quaking resident asked.

“That the pure waters running from the mountains be captured and rendered unto me, to quench and refresh me as once they did,” replied the dragon.

Purloined Image

The little man retreated into the buzzing crowd, who silenced themselves, heard the demand and pushed the representative back toward the monster.

“I... I… I’m afr… afraid that will be quite… quite impossible,” the little man reported.

In seconds, the dragon drew in his breath, almost doubling in size, and exhaled a blistering flame that roasted the hapless villagers and reduced their homes to ash with only a few standing chimneys remaining.

Then he lumbered away.

"Tubbs" Fire, Sonoma County

Over the ridge, the dragon spied another hamlet.  Folks, having seen the cloud of smoke rising over the neighboring hills had already gathered when the dragon arrived.

“What is it that you desire?” a quaking resident of this new locale asked.

“That the winds coursing over these tors and rises and into your valley be diverted to my nostrils so that I may again smell their sweetness,” replied the dragon.

The little man returned to the agitated crowd and was soon thrust out in front of the beast.

“I... I… I’m afr… afraid that will be quite… quite impossible,” the little man reported.

"Carr" Fire, Shasta County

Again, in seconds, the dragon drew in his breath, again inflating himself to twice his normal size, and again exhaled a fiery force that roasted the people and reduced their homes to ash with only a few standing chimneys remaining.

Again, he lumbered away.

Down in a broad valley, the dragon spotted a town of a little larger size.  By this time the city fathers were aware of the rampages wrought by the beast.  A representative stepped forward to receive the demand.

“Riches!” the frustrated and angry beast snorted.  “I want all the riches that you possess, and I want them all this instant!”

The little man screwed up his courage and asked, “Why?”

The dragon roared, “Because you can’t care for them.”

Once again, this hapless man sought counsel from his townspeople and once again he was returned to face the monster and once again the people and the town were incinerated and once again, the fire-breathing dragon lumbered off looking for another village or town to threaten taking with him, as yet, neither the water, nor the air, nor the riches he demanded.

"Camp" Fire, Butte County

Yes, the fairy tale is grim, but sadly, it is not a fairy tale.  The villages and towns are real.  They are Santa Rosa, California and Redding and now Paradise, California and Thousand Oaks.  

And the demands of the fire-breathing dragon, to which we will now give the name “Climate,” are simple: Alter priorities a bit and better care for the planet upon which we live lest more of our cities and towns burn.

And those demands are not “quite impossible.”

They are essential.

© 2018 

Church of the Open Road Press

“IS PARADISE BURNING?”

comment from a social media participant 

monitoring the “Camp” fire from his or her home

To the extent that I grew up, I grew up in Chico.  The span was 1957 through about 1980.  Highlights of those years always involved a trip to Paradise – above the fog, below the snow – and to the ridge beyond.  There was a Chinese dinner place called the Pagoda where a red-headed lady waited on us for visit after visit, year after year.  I grew up thinking “Chinese ladies” all had red hair.  There was the Wildwood Inn where, as young members of the Chico Community Band – I played tuba – after a concert in the Paradise Park, we stopped in for victuals that were so bad that the band director took us to Cal’s Drive-in in Chico for 29-cent burgers to make it up to us.  And the Colonial Inn where first wife and I and another couple would end up for sundaes after a moonlight drive.  

Most recently, on overnights when visiting family in Chico, the Ponderosa Gardens – a throwback to earlier non-chain motel day – would be our lodging of choice.  Located across the main drag? The Italian Garden Restaurant, a joint I remember as a seafood place called Pinocchio’s with a narrow, spiral stairway to the storage area I had to climb in order to drop off freight when working my college-days’ summer job.

Pedaling a Schwinn three-speed up the Honey Run past the Covered Bridge I’d imagine myself a Yahi Indian stalking a black tail and not ever having to go to school. Picnicking at the cemetery in Centerville, I’d picture myself mucking nuggets out of Butte Creek.  Strolling the Magalia flumes, I’d envision myself a ditch tender making sure logs cut up in the mountains raced unabated down to the mill in the valley.  Piloting a motorcycle up the Skyway, over Humbug Pass and into the Almanor Basin – an adventure to be repeated over and over whether straddling my 1970 Honda Trail 90 or horsing my 2009 BMW GSA along that gravelly bi-way – imagining nothing, rather simply enjoying the sublime beauty of an endless and pristine northern Sierra.

On Thursday, November 8, the “Camp” fire – spawned around 6:30 AM – roared out of the Feather River Canyon, up the ridge and wiped out many of the places I recall from my youth (although we’re not officially sure, yet) and in its wake, took the possibility that some little kid living in Chico today might be able to replicate those memories or embrace those fantasies.  

Damn!

More than any wild fire in recent memory – and there have been more than a few – this one saddens me.

© 2018

Church of the Open Road Press

OROVILLE DAM

A Personal History

I watched ‘em build Oroville Dam.  Yep.  That Oroville Dam. 

Department of Water Resources

In the 1960s, we lived In Chico, California about a half hour from Oroville Dam’s construction site on the Feather River.  With the foresight that only a few wise parents possess, Mom and Dad thought it would be a good idea if their boys could witness the construction of what would become an Eighth Wonder of the World.

Courtesy: Dad

As kids, our folks ensured that we rooted around historic places in the general vicinity of Chico.  One was Bidwell’s Bar on the Feather.  It was the place where Chico’s founder, John Bidwell, did a little prospecting and placer mining.  Located on a stream course that would be crossed by what would become the Oroville – Quincy Highway, California’s first suspension bridge was built to span the gully.  With the filling of the reservoir, the bridge would be lost, so efforts were made to relocate the historic structure, but I remember it in its original location.

(c) Bill Talbitzer

Many tidbits of history were to be Lost Beneath the Feather, so local newspaper reporter Bill Talbitzer collected stories of both the mining camps along the Feather and of old Oroville, put these together with some historic photographs and published an entertaining volume of lore by the same name.  I have three copies.

Encyclopaedia Brittanica

Construction of the dam began with the installation of a concrete core way down in the bottom of the river canyon.  An observation point had been leveled out so the curious could see this process a great distance up the side of the canyon.  To my nine-year-old eye, the gigantic earthmovers and concrete pumpers looked no bigger than the Tootsie Toys we played with in the pile of dirt out behind the house. 

We would return to this overlook many times to watch the progress.  Being only nine, and then ten, it seemed like it took forever for any of that progress to be noted.  But the observation area proved to be popular – so much so that some entrepreneurial type threw together a snack bar with a large sign advertising “Best Hot Dogs by a Dam Site.”  I thought it was odd that they’d use a cuss word on their billboard, but that was long before I really grasped (and embraced) cussing.

Petersen Tractor

At 770 feet in height and over a half mile in length at the top, Oroville Dam is the world’s largest earth fill dam.  Materials for the endeavor linked Oroville’s 1860s past with its 1960s present.  Where the Feather River tumbles out of the Sierra/Cascade and into the broad, flat Sacramento Valley, the velocity of the falling water slows and it’s load of gravel and silt and gold was deposited along the river’s bottom.  Massive dredges were employed to scoop up this rocky sludge so that gold would be extracted from the goop.  The tailing left behind covered square miles of valley floor, sitting there, undisturbed, until folks realized they were a dandy source of earth-fill for an earth-fill dam.

A twelve-mile long railroad was devised to transport these historic cobbles from the valley floor to the construction site.  Trains of forty car lengths hauled the burden and were ingeniously unloaded using a machine that tipped the load out of the gondolas without unhooking them from the train.

One day, probably a couple of years into our visits, we were surprised to find that the observation area had been fenced off and the hot dog stand removed.  Following detour signs, we soon found ourselves several hundred feet above the old vantage point at a new one.  There would still be a lot of work to do.

Not the least of which was the removal of a concrete arch bridge that was filled around with tailings and protruding out face of the construction.  In order to ensure the integrity of the dam the bridge would need to be blasted away – and the blast would be spectacular.  With multitudes of others, we gathered at the upper observation point to witness the scheduled explosion.  Noon would be the appointed hour and at high noon – with the gathered holding their collective breaths – a plunger was pushed and, outside of what looked like a minor puff of dust, nothing happened.  It would be weeks before the old bridge was taken out.

Completed in 1967 or 68, Oroville Dam would corral the second largest reservoir in the state.  The route of the Western Pacific would be moved, and a new suspension bridge crossed over a now inundated Bidwell’s Bar.  It was predicted that in three year’s time, the lake would be full. 

But an unusually wet rainy season turned that three-year timetable into mere months.  We drove over to Oroville to watch the dam spill for the first time.  Water raced down the chute, crashing into bolsters at the bottom designed to keep the current from washing out the opposite bank of the Feather.  It worked perfectly.

Six or eight years later, when I was living in nearby Paradise, California, a large and rather disconcerting earthquake rattled Butte County causing many broken windows and some structural damage to buildings in downtown Oroville.  Speculation held that the weight of the water behind the dam might have caused movement along a minor fault or fissure with ripple effects across the immediate area.  I recall my brand new VW bus sitting under a wildly swinging carport and wondering what insurance might cover.

NBC

In January and February of 2017, California’s five-year drought was interrupted by a series of atmospheric river storms.  Funneling up the river courses of the American, the Yuba and the Feather, area reservoirs filled to capacity way too early in the wet season.  Engineers and hydrologists knew that to reserve capacity for future unknowns, releases from Oroville would be necessary and the spillway was again activated.   

San Francisco Chronicle

This time, however, the unforeseen occurred.  A fault in the huge concrete slip-n-slide allowed water to drain through the surface rather than over it.  In a short time, the boil of water washed out some strata or fill beneath the spillway and a hole developed.  Water rushed beneath the structure and began eroding the hillside.  Operators halted the spill to assess the situation while an incredible volume of water poured into the lake from upstream.

Sacramento Bee

Fortunately, an emergency spillway – one never used before – worked as it had been engineered, allowing inches of water to outflow over its 179-foot length.  In anticipation of this event, a little clearing of the overgrown emergency route ensure that trees, brush and debris would not wash down to the Feather’s course clogging it at the Table Mountain Boulevard Bridge and possibly wiping it out.

When the waters came, everything worked as designed.

Still, “experts” from around the country predicted that the dam was on the brink of failure, raising concerns that were generally unfounded.  Through this I’ve concluded, yet again, that the following is true:

OPINION + KEYBOARD does not = EXPERT

Department of Water Resources

We live in an age where too many believe that nothing the government does is done well.  Oroville Dam stands in stark contrast to that belief.  It is a masterpiece that has lived up to its billing as an “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

o0o

Notes:  Here’s a DWR video that tells the real story of the dam’s construction.  It is worth six minutes of your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_5udzKfLQM

Please forgive any uncredited images found in this post.

UPDATE!!!  Two and a half hours after posting this the Department of Water Resources (DWR) called for an evacuation of low lying areas of Oroville as the soil/topcover in the emergency spillway began to show unexpected signs of erosion. It appears that lake inflow has slowed and that releases down the damaged main spillway have been increased to, hopefully accommodate the circumstance. That said, perhaps the Church of the Open Road was a bit premature in suggesting that "everything worked as designed."

Still, reports of a dam failure are still in the "too early to tell" category.

© 2017

Church of the Open Road Press