goldfields

On October 24, 1841, John Bidwell and the rest of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party were still in the Sierras, and very lucky that the winter storms had not yet begun. John had left the rest of the company to hunt for game the day before, and had spent the night sleeping by a giant fallen sequoia in what is now Calaveras Big Trees State Park. 

He spent most of Sunday the 24th hunting for his companions. He writes in his journal: “I overtook them. They had hired an Indian pilot who led had led them into the worst place he could find and absconded. 5 horses and mules had given out; they were left. . . . part of a horse was saved to eat.”

If they had gotten the kind of rain we saw this weekend (and I assume it’s snowing in the mountains), I wonder if they would have made it?

Goldfields (Lasthenia californica) is a common California wildflower—you can see it all over over Table Mountain in the spring. For me the name combines two of my favorite things: California wildflowers and California history.

I am lucky enough to live in beautiful Butte County, where the wildflowers and the history are abundant. Butte County was home to one of California’s greatest pioneers—John Bidwell. His home, Bidwell Mansion, still stands in Chico and is a state historic park, well worth a visit. In my time as a librarian for the Butte County Library, I noticed that there was no biography of John Bidwell for young readers, so I wrote one. This blog will introduce that book, as well as chronicle other adventures in Northern California.