100 Years of Bidwell's Bar History  shown on one photo

* The exact spot where John Bidwell discovered gold at his namesake Bidwell’s Bar on July 4, 1848 is unknown.  The long river section of fast moving water, just above a sharp turn in the river followed by an area of slow moving water, created a natural sluice box for the settlement of the heavy gold carried by the rivers water.

A. The 1853 -1856 historic town of Bidwell was located in the area of the State Park parking lot and to the river. The Courthouse Hill area was above the parking lot.

B. The original road from Oroville to Bidwell’s Bar passed through the area on the right side of the parking lot. Before the ferry or bridge was available the river low-water-crossing was in the area where a gravel bar is now located in the center of the river.

C. The ferry service, which operated from 1852 to 1856, was located between the area of the low water crossing and the upriver suspension bridge. The 1856 route of the road to the Suspension bridge is just out of view along the left edge of the photo.

D. Photo viewpoint is from a construction road leading to the site of the north tower of the new Bidwell Bar bridge, located a mile upriver (to left). Prior to the construction road it was a long, hard, uphill climb from the north end of the Bidwell suspension bridge to this viewpoint!

E. The north end of the 1856 Bidwell’s Bar Suspension bridge was located just out of sight down the foreground ridge. The south approach to the historic suspension bridge is visible. The bridge structure has been removed to a State Park storage location for future reassembly.

F. The tollhouse was located on the downriver side of the south bridge approach. It has been removed.

G. Beginning about 1900, the area north of the river became identified as Bidwell or Bidwell Bar. The use of the same place name for two adjacent locations separated by only a half-mile has caused much historical confusion.

H. When construction of the railroad up the main Feather River Canyon was underway in 1905, the contractors used the Bidwell Suspension bridge to access the north side of the Middle Fork, then built a wagon road one and one-half mile long to the Junction of the Middle and North Fork of the Feather River.  A wagon or automobile bridge was never built at that crossing which would have provided access from Bidwell to Oroville. It is unknown if the visible horizontal line above the 1948 county bridge is the location of the original route or if it was lower on the hillside above the river.  

I. In 1919, William (Bill) Curry purchased the property below the Bidwell Bridge and developed it for recreational use. He donated the area to the Fellows Club  of Oroville in 1924.  That year, the Bidwell Bar Park Association was created and Curry was appointed as park custodian.  In 1955 the area became the Curry-Bidwell unit of the State Park system. A string of floats is visible which definins the swimming area above the river sandbar.

J. On July 13, 1920, the Hutchinson Lumber Company started operations in Butte County.  The company purchased the Totman homestead and surveyors were assigned to the camp located at Bidwell’s Bar. In conjunction with Western Pacific (WP) the two companies built a railroad from a siding at the junction of the Middle and North Forks of the Feather River, where the WP mainline was located to, Mooretown (Feather Falls). Trains of logs started passing through Bidwell Bar in 1921! During the years 1922 to 1932, a series of natural disasters, changing market conditions and unfortunate business decisions damaged the company. The breaking point was a fire that destroyed the Oroville sawmill on October 6,1927. The company went bankrupt in 1935. When investor and creditor debts were liquidated the remaining assets were sold at public auction to the only bidders - A. H. Land, and O. O. Cooper.

K.  In 1936, A. H. Land was able to secure a government loan, made available as a result of the Great Depression. Reorganized as the Feather River Pine Mills Company, a new sawmill was built at Feather Falls. The sawmill, and the renamed Feather River Railway (FRRy), were fully operational by July 1, 1940, and  continued operations until July 22, 1955. The railroad WYE (turnaround) located at Bidwell’s Bar was a significant feature of the railroad between Feather Falls and the Land junction. The sound of trains traveling through the Bidwell’s Bar once again became common after a thirteen-year absence. In addition to the massive sawmill at Feather Falls, a second re-manufacture plant was built at Bidwell’s Bar in the early 1940’s and operated until the early 1950’s. The Georgia Pacific Cooperation purchased the Feather Falls Mill and railway and operated the FRRy until 1967 when it was abandoned. The mill continued to operate for several additional years

L. Due to weight limitations on the suspension bridge, logging companies developed a seasonal log-bridge-river crossing for trucks in a lower area of Bidwell’s Bar. A diagonal line is visible in the trees above the state park parking lot, indicating the alignment of the road connecting with the road to Oroville.

 M. In 1947-48 a new county cement bridge was constructed and the road between Oroville and Berry Creek rerouted to bypass both the historic and new Bidwell sites 

 The mid-summer 1964 photo is significant since it is one of the last photos of the area before flood waters seriously damaged the site. On December 23, 1964, floodwaters overwhelmed the diversion tunnel at the Oroville Dam Construction site. The photo below shows impounded floodwaters backed up several miles into the Middle Fork of the Feather River and inundated the entire Bidwell’s Bar area. The historic town of Bidwell was locaed just below the tree covered ridge extending into the water near the center of the image. The new Bidwell Bridge, located one mile upriver was still under construction.

Thanks to Paul Mitchell for colorizing the photo.

 The 1964 flooding was a foreshadowing of what occurred on November 14, 1967, at 4:30 pm, when State Park Ranger Waldemar “Wyk” Wiederhoeft, while on land patrol, saw Bidwell Bar go underwater as the lake behind Oroville dam filled, encasing the historic site in a final water grave.

The water flowing down the Feather River brought golden treasure that was the source of Bidwell's Bar's place in history. Ironically, it was water coming up the same river that wrote the final chapter of Bidwell’s Bar’s visible existence.

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