Decoration








The Association for Northern California Historical Research is a non-profit group working to support historical research in Northern California. Our mission is to increase the understanding and appreciation of Northeastern California History through encouraging and promoting programs of historical research and publication, and encouraging the preservation of and access to historical public, business, and private records, oral history, video, film, and photographs.


ANCHR's Featured Book

Introduction to The Oroville-Quincy Ridge Route: Development, Eclipse and Renewal of a Transportation Artery by David M. Brown.

Dave Brown Our region, in the pioneering days, saw the development of several routes for transportation within the area and with the outside world. Some of these corridors we recognize today as our main highways of travel while others have nearly vanished, observable as abandoned trails and roads only by those with a trained eye.

Today, one of these routes we know alternatively as the “Oroville-Quincy Highway.” “Bucks Lake Road,” “The Ridge Route” and “the back way” between Quincy and Oroville. Beginning with the Beckwourth Trail of 1851, this route approximately follows the summit of the ridge between the North and Middle Forks of the Feather River. After years of neglect, it has now metamorphosed into an attractive byway. While subject to winter closures due to snow, it provides an interesting alternative for travelers who might otherwise use State Highway 70, the “canyon route,” between Quincy and Oroville.

Dave Brown is a fifth generation northern Californian who has worked as a counselor and care manager, primarily with senior citizens, since 1973. Taught by his father, Arch Brown, an automotive industry historian and freelance writer, to follow the links between past and present, he finds history research to be one of the best means to understand the present. The author joined a car trip led by Florence Allen Norby, a great aunt by marriage, in the La Porte area when he was nine years old, thereby kindling a lifelong interest in the region. Norby’s deep knowledge of that section’s history made it come alive with stories about each place as it was visited. Through the years since, the author has visited and learned to understand the experiences of earlier generations in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains.

A longtime resident of Butte County and past president of Butte County Historical Society and ANCHR, Dave has also been a property owner at Meadow Valley since 1978. The author wishes to share his knowledge of Oroville-Quincy Ridge Route with others, including others with a bond to this beautiful and historically rich country.

Dave Brown has done scholarly and exhaustive work, resulting in a book that describes how a pioneering transportation route has evolved over more than a century and a half, changing as needs of the users change and adjusting to competition from other routes. Written as a research project with citations, it is also designed to interest all readers wishing to know more about travel in the Feather River region of California.

The book is rich with maps, charts, and, most especially, historical photos.

The Oroville-Quincy Ridge Route.
Dave M . Brown, 2012, 132 pp.
ISBN 978-1-931994-22-4
Price $18.65 plus $1.35 tax, $20.00 total.
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1. Edward Stuhl's California Poppy and Book Image: reprinted with permission of Meriam Library Special Collections Department at CSU, Chico, CA. All rights reserved.