In the late 1800s, the green gold of California's inland timber belt included the long-coned sugar pine and cinnamon-dusted ponderosa pine of Big Chico Creek Canyon. Tucked into the steep terrain of present-day Butte and Tehama Counties, the bustling West Branch Mill logging operations moved timber from the foothills east of Chico to waiting markets in Sacramento, Marysville and San Francisco. Local author Andy Mark recounts the lesser-known history of the West Branch Mill, recalling a time when resident physician Newton T. Enloe treated the daring men who faced daily peril, John Bidwell's bumpy and sometimes treacherous Humboldt Wagon Road was essentially the only route to town and Big Chico Creek was lined with an elevated flume running lumber and ambulance rafts.

Before the completion of the transcontinental railroad, there was the Chico and Humboldt Wagon Road, meant to connect California with the burgeoning mining industries of Nevada and Idaho. The ambitious plan to make Chico a major Northern California transportation hub was spearheaded by John Bidwell and began in earnest in 1864. The road opened new areas to mining and logging and provided opportunities for less scrupulous characters. Stagecoach robberies, murders and shootouts were just some of the misfortunes that occurred on the road, along with the dangers nature provided--snowstorms, perilous terrain and grizzly bears. Author Andy Mark offers a glimpse of what it was like for nineteenth-century travelers and settlers on the route of the Humboldt Wagon Road.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press The giant redwood trees are one of California’s best known attractions. Thousands of tourists visit the Northern California groves each year. The story of the California redwood lumber industry also tells the stories of the men, the trains, and the land. This book is dedicated to the pioneer lumbermen who succeeded in launching careers as mill men by overcoming the tremendous obstacle of moving the giant redwoods from the woods to the mill, by inventing equipment strong enough to handle the gigantic logs, and by finding suitable markets for their lumber throughout the Pacific area; and to Augustus William Ericson and the other early photographers who preserved the early history of logging in pictures.

Located within the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, the forests of Plumas County were once seen as a source of endless timber. Lumber was needed during the Gold Rush for water flumes, mine timbers, and an array of buildings. While timber was abundant, the abilities of the early settlers to harvest, transport, and mill the logs were often very limited. Markets remained relatively local throughout the second half of the 19th century until the completion of the Western Pacific Railroad in 1909. This sparked a new rush of industry into the region. Vast tracts of untapped Plumas County timber were bought up by speculators, and many sawmills were erected. Logging in the western United States moved from animal power to steam engines to internal combustion in the space of about 50 years. While Plumas Countys lumber industry was reflective of these developments, it also found its own identity as a timber-producing region that was nearly unequaled.

Sequoia sempervirens, California coastal redwood, was Humboldt County's economic mainstay from the 1850s onwards. By the early 20th century, harvesting "red gold" was the major industry along California's North Coast, with Humboldt at the forefront of the industry. The first half of the 20th century saw technological changes in logging and milling. New uses for redwood included cigar boxes, "presto-logs," and core logs for plywood. The industry began reforestation practices, growing their own seedlings as early as 1907. World War I and the Great Depression impacted the industry, as did activism to preserve the redwoods. In the 1930s, the largest stand of old-growth redwoods was preserved, and the turmoil of the 1935 strike resulted in several strikers being killed in Eureka. This book explores Humboldt's early-20th-century lumber industry and day-to-day realities of life in the mills and woods in an era underrepresented in published logging history.