Butte County CA Archives History - Books .....Description 1882
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Book Title: History Of Butte County

HISTORY OF BUTTE COUNTY,
BY
HARRY L. WELLS AND W. L. CHAMBERS.

    Notwithstanding that it has been mutilated on all sides and shorn of some of
its richest mining and agricultural sections, losing in all about four times the
territory now remaining within its limits, Butte county is one of the most
prosperous and populous in the state. It contains now 1,746 square miles, or
1,117,440 acres, of which a large portion lies in the fertile valley, the
grain-field of California, while thousands of acres lie in the auriferous belt
of the Sierra and have been yielding their millions of golden treasure for a
third of a century. The land is divided into 552,960 acres of mineral land,
368,640 of timber, and 195,840 of agricultural. Many acres laid down in the map
as mineral or timber are in reality fit for and much of them used for
agricultural purposes, the total number of acres assessed in 1881 being 658,382,
or more than one-half the county.

    The county of Butte, so named from the Butte mountains, those specimens of
the caprices of nature which once lay within its limits but now form a portion
of Sutter county, and which have been previously described in these pages [see
Settlement of the Sacramento Valley], is situated in the upper Sacramento
valley, and lies between 39° 17' and 40° 9' north latitude, and 121° and 122° of
longitude west from Greenwich. It is bounded on the north by Tehama county, on
the east by Plumas, on the south by Yuba and Sutter, and on the west by Colusa
and Tehama, to each of which, save the county of Yuba, it has contributed
generous slices of its territory. Originally the Sacramento river formed its
complete boundary line on the west, but now the river borders it but a few
miles, the balance of the old boundary lying within the limits of Tehama and
Colusa counties. Butte creek flows from the extreme northeastern corner of the
county to the extreme southwestern, empting into the Sacramento river, and
forming for a few miles above its mouth a part of the western boundary line. The
Feather river, celebrated for the richness of its gold deposits, lies partly
within the eastern portion of the county, branching within the county into three
forks, each of which finds its source high up in the mountains of Plumas county.
Honcut creek, a small tributary of the Feather, forms for a distance the
boundary line separating Butte from Yuba county. Other small streams,
tributaries of those already mentioned, follow their tortuous courses in every
portion of the county.

    Through the richest agricultural section of the western end of the county
runs the Oregon division of the Central Pacific railroad, offering facilities
for transportation that, combined with the great fertility of its soil and the
waterway of the Sacramento river, have made Butte county the first in the list
of grain-producing counties of California. The California Northern railroad from
Marysville, in Yuba county, to Oroville, the county-seat of Butte, and the
shipping point for the products of the foothills and mountains, has also played
an important part in the development of the county.

    Towns with their hum of busy life, fields of waving grain as far as the eye
can reach on the vast plain of the valley, vineyards on the sloping sides of the
sunny foothills, and rich mines of gold in the recesses of the timber-covered
mountains—these are the general characteristics of Butte county, each of which
will be specially considered in another portion of the volume.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

HISTORY OF BUTTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,
IN TWO VOLUMES.

I.
HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA FROM 1513 TO 1850.
BY FRANK T. GILBERT.

The Great Fur Companies and their Trapping Expeditions to California.
Settlement of the Sacramento Valley. 
The Discovery of Gold in California.
BY HARRY L. WELLS.

II.
HISTORY OF BUTTE COUNTY,
From its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. 
BY HARRY L. WELLS AND W. L. CHAMBERS.

BOTH VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED WITH VIEWS AND PORTRAITS.
HARRY L. WELLS,
517 CLAY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO
1882.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by HARRY L. WELLS, in
the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

FRANCIS, VALENTINE & Co., Engravers & Printers
517 Clay St., San Francisco


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