OLD HAUNT

 …first in a series of stories from a recent road trip

My pal and I powered up the roughly paved road to the Paxton Hotel about mid-afternoon.  It would be my first real visit in about 65 years.  Or would it be a visit at all?

         As we set our Moto Guzzis on their side stands, a furious looking someone steamed in our direction from a nearby cabin.  

         “Just the man I was lookin’ for,” I said before he could utter a word.

         “Huh?”

         “Yeah.  You run this place?” I asked.

         “Security and stuff,” he said.  “Who wants to know?”

         I’d unzipped my bike’s tail pack and slipped out a copy Eden, Indeed: Tales, Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy.  [Available by special order through your neighborhood independent bookseller – or through that online company that starts with an A.]  “Here,” I said.

         Whatever steam he had boiled up began to dissipate.  “What’s this?

         “A book I wrote about growing up in Chico. There’s a story in there [starting on page 48] about the time Dad stopped in here for a beer ‘cause he was tired of hearin’ me and my brother squabble in the back seat of the car.”  

         Security and Stuff crimped an eye and began thumbing through pages.

         “The barkeep served up Dad’s beer and then scared the crap out of me with a story about a ghost woman who sat in a rocking chair all night.”

         The man grinned.  “That rocker’s right there on the porch.” He pointed.  “Go take a look.”  

         I climbed up the stairs and snapped a picture or two.  Frankly, the chair didn’t look exactly like or old enough to be the one in question, but I’d been seven at the time of my other visit and memories can be fuzzy.  

         “Would you like to see what they’ve done to the place?”  I wondered who ‘they’ was and how many ‘theys’ there’d been in the past six decades.

         The entrance was not as I remembered.  No shaft of light illuminated a tired wooden floor or tattered rug when he opened the door.  I didn’t see the upright piano or the moth-eaten American flag.  The filmy curtains were gone and the windows seemed to close, which they didn’t do before.  It seems a lot of work had been done and redone to freshen things up.  The bar was polished and clean – no cigarette butts filled ashtrays – and the kitchen looked commercial and modern.  

         “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show you the widow’s watch.  You wanna see it?”

         “Sure!”  

         I was expecting to head upstairs, but instead squeezed through a narrow portal and clumped down a darkened set of stairs.  The walls had no interior plaster or sheathing, just rough two-by-fours with light slipping through cracks in the exterior planking.  The air smelled of dust and mildew aged a century or more.  

         As we clambered down, he explained: “Sorry to be so gruff up there.  This is private property and I just ran off five guys and a gal who seemed pretty high on something.  Didn’t understand the term private.  Got into quite an argument.  Made me kinda edgy.  Sheriff can’t respond too quickly in this neck of the canyon.  Distance and all.”

         We pushed through a narrow passage with a grubby, littered floor with poor footing.  Opening a door that he must have located by feel alone he said, “Here’s where they found that rocking chair.”  Then he pointed at a pair of windows that didn’t quite close.  “That’s where she was lookin’ out.”

         I stepped around a weary settee that might have survived a trip around the horn and peered through the dusty, wrinkled glass.  “You can’t see the tracks from here.  Aren’t they up the hill?”

         “Yeah. It doesn’t make sense, does it?  But this is where they say they found what they think was the old gal’s chair.”  I again wondered about ‘they.’  

         He opened a door and now sunlight flooded in.  We stepped outside finding ourselves at the basement of the grand old building.  The Feather River rushed by in the ravine a hundred or so feet below us, its current offering an age-old whisper.  Although we could see Highway 70, the old Western Pacific Line was nowhere in sight.

         He thumbed through the book.  “So you grew up in Chico?”

         “Yep.”

         “So did I.  Chico High.  Class of ’79.”  He offered a bit more bio.  Father was a lawyer.  He, himself, flew fixed wing transport until he retired a few years back and moved home.  Came to do this for lack of anything better.  Enjoyed the place and the job; not so much having to run folks off.

 

The Paxton Hotel is now used for special occasions like weddings and such.  Rooms aren’t available to passers-through, but we were told we could stop by any time.

         As my pal and I puttered down the road back to the highway, I wasn’t sure I’d seen the actual chair – at least it wasn’t the one I remembered – or visited the actual window where the ghost lady would rock at midnight “Waitin’, just waitin’ for her true love to return.”  

         But I was sure I’d visited an old haunt.

 

© 2024

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

GREAT POTTY STOPS ALONG THE OPEN ROAD - RIVER BEND PARK OFF HIGHWAY 70: OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA

First in a series.

TRAVELING STATE ROUTE 70 from the valley to the Sierra, one can be captivated by the richness of one of the world’s most productive river valleys, the ruggedness of one of California’s most scenic river canyons and the sublime nature of the forested transition between the Sierra and the Cascade. Once in the mountains, the US Forest Service provides ample campground, picnic areas and rest stops for the traveler who is enjoying nature when nature calls. But in the agricultural flatlands, choices are limited to the occasional convenience store where you may not want to buy a bag of Doritos, or the occasional fast food joint where you may not want to buy a kiddie meal.

OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA is the seat of Butte County. Highway 70 skirts the town’s western edge. Configured as a freeway along this section, it is easy to whiz by town and forget that, somebody may have to go.

After many journeys through the area, I stumbled into River Bend Park. Located at the west end of Montgomery Street and built through a joint community effort involving local funds and service club labor, River Bend offers clean restrooms with stainless steel facilities. Nosing around the park, one will find that it is an outstanding place to take a fatigue break. River Bend has individual and group picnic facilities with heavy steel charcoal grills and solid concrete tables. Sites are spaced throughout acre upon acre of groomed grass. Certainly a nice place for a mid-afternoon snooze, if warranted.

(c) Paradise Post

Provided at River Bend is an Outdoor Fitness Course, a project of the local Rotary Club. It is considered state-of-the art and is designed for low impact cardio-vascular health and fitness for all levels and is located on this site. It consists of four stations, each with directions for the various activities. After hours in the saddle, it provides an excellent means by which the rider and limber up those unused muscles, bones and fibers.

River Bend Park is located at, well, a bend in the Feather River, perhaps five or six miles below Oroville Dam. The park is situated on the inside or depositional side of the turn, the opposite side of the river is a bluff that constantly erodes as seasonal changes in water flow eat into its soft composite. The river’s deposition affords a smooth gravel beach which is designated a swim area.

A recent November visit found me concerned about a rotten smell the closer I got to the river. I was ready to be disappointed because the entire facility looked so clean, trim and well maintained. Approaching the river, the submerged chunk that appeared to be waterlogged was actually the remains of a Chinook salmon who had previously spawned just a little bit up stream. Further investigation found several of them. Terrific news that the salmon are back and an interesting lesson that mother nature’s natural beauty and rhythm isn’t always the most sensorially pleasant.


OROVILLE IS AWASH WITH HISTORY from the discovery of gold to the discovery of Ishi (purported to be the last stone-age human living in North America) to the construction of the world’s largest earth-fill dam. But if one doesn’t choose to explore this rich and interesting area, know that one of the better potty stops in all of northern California is just off the highway.

####

NOTE: The “Church of the Open Road” hopes to add more area photographs of this and other “Great Potty Stops of the Open Road” as the series continues.

Readers are invited to suggest their favorite “Great Potty Stops” in the comment section of this post. The “Church” will investigate.


RESOURCES:

Butte County’s "101 Things to Do": http://101thingstodo.net/oroville/14.shtml

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds. University of California Press. 1961. The classic biography contrasting the Last Yahi’s life before and after his contact with modern man.

Nadeau, Remi. Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of California. 5th edition. 1999.  "A delightful, humorous and historical look at the towns and mining camps of California to be enjoyed by both the casual reader and the serious history buff." - Placerville Mountain Democrat

Talbitzer, William. Lost Beneath the Feather. Bill Talbitzer, 1963. Compiled and written by a long-time Chico Enterprise Record reporter, Talbitzer shares stories of the section of the Feather River inundated once the pool behind Oroville Dam filled. Available at the Lake Oroville Visitor Center.

Ghost Lady of Paxton Lodge

Highway 70 - Feather River Canyon

Paxton. It’s across the river from the highway, just underneath the WP tracks. We stopped on our first trip to Bucks Lake. Up the new road. Highway 70. Smooth paved highway that snaked up the canyon. Mom and dad oohed and ahhed at the water cascading down the canyon walls in various places. We twist our heads around and maybe get a glimpse of yet another trickling waterfall. Big deal. Brother Bill and me, we just wanted to get there. The old road, the Oroville-Quincy Highway was shorter but it was hardscrabble dirt. The longer route up Highway 70 was quicker, overall, and the old ’54 Ford Ranch wagon wouldn’t need a washing once we got home.

Paxton was a little more than half way. Brother Bill and me had had about enough of each other – Mom would attest: “That’ll be about enough!” more than once on this trip. So we needed a break and dad would be happy with a cold can or bottle of Lucky Lager.

Across the Paxton Bridge and up the hill, we tumbled out of the station wagon in front of the once grand old hostelry.

There was a great room adjoining the bar where dad ordered his beer. Maybe a dance hall? In it was an upright grand piano that I wanted to pound on. A tattered woven rug covered at least a portion of the pocked, nearly black wood floor. Filmy, aged-to-yellow curtains danced in the gentle breeze that slipped through the almost closed double-hung wood framed windows.

Positioned to look out one of those windows, the one with the best view of the tracks was an empty rocker. I advanced toward it and slipped my fingertips along one arm.

“I wouldn’t do that, boy,” came a voice punctuated by a spasmy cough. The man who’d served up dad’s beer had come around the end of the bar. He was half the size of Dad with a tattered plaid shirt tucked over a round belly and partially into blue jeans. A half-spent Chesterfield dangled from his gray lips.

My hand retreated.

“Boy,” he said, “the woman who owned this old place, why, that was her chair.”

I looked at the old wooden rocker. It was just an old wooden rocker.

“Yep, she and her husband built and ran this old hotel way before the turn of the century. Ever’thing’s original, just like she left it.”

I remember looking at the faded curtains, the old piano and into the shadowy darkness of the dance hall room. Then out the window again at the WP tracks that wound down the canyon and disappeared.

“One day, her man, he hopped on that train to head down to Oryville to conduct some bid’ness or other.”

The barkeep had grown closer. I could smell the toasted aroma of his cigarette. He gently put his hand on my shoulder and pointed down the tracks with the hand holding the smoke.

“Yep. The train pulled a whistle stop and let him on and off he went.” Barkeep exhaled some and coughed a deep phlegmy cough. “Never returned.”

“Never?” my voice squeaked wonder.

“Nope. Never did.” He paused. “Old woman, why she positioned that rocker just exactly so and sat at that window mornin’ ‘til night, rockin’ ever so gently. Waiting. Just waiting…” A thoughtful pause and an exhale. “Waiting for her man to return.”

I felt my eyes getting big.

The barkeep took a final drag on his Chesterfield and snuffed it out in one of those old glass-yellow Harrah’s Casino ashtrays.

“One day, ‘bout dusk, she was sittin’ in that chair when a train rumbled up the canyon. Why you could hear the engines straining to pull a mile o’ box cars up the hill. By and by, it passed…”

I looked up at the man.

“…and so did she.”

I stepped away from the dead lady’s chair.

“But you know what, sonny?” he said resting his hand on my shoulder and giving it a little squeeze, “’Round midnight, ever’ night, when I come down stairs to kinda check things out an’ make sure the doors is all locked up, why, she’s here…

“Right there…

“Rockin’ in that chair…

“Ever so gently.”

Another spasmy cough.

“I figure she’s still waiting for her man, her true love to return.”

I turned to find dad.

“I seen her…” the unkempt little barkeep whispered as I wiggled away.

I needed to find dad or mom. Dad was finishing his beer at the bar singing, “It is Lucky when you live in America.” Mom was standing by the door, wishing we’d a get a move on. I found her skirts and clung to them.

In a moment we opened the door. A shaft of afternoon light bathed a section of the wood floor. A breeze quaked through and disturbed the yellowy curtains. I shot a glance over my shoulder back toward the pot-bellied barkeep and squeezed mom’s hip ever more tightly. The proprietor was tapping a fresh Chesterfield on the old bar.

He coughed a bit and acted as if he needed to spit. “We’ve got rooms tonight,” he laughed, “Spend the night, sonny boy. I’ll wake you and you c’n see her too.”


© 2004
Church of the Open Road Press