A Small Corner of the West: Butte Meadows, Chico Meadows, and Jonesville

Jim Jessee (photo DA)

An amazing 12-year effort on the part of 15 authors, over 150 contributors, and many technical and artistic advisers has produced A Small Corner of the West: Butte Meadows, Chico Meadows, and Jonesville. The book, a project of the Butte Meadows/Jonesville Community Association and History Committee, is filled with historical photographs and background, maps, stories and lore. Jim Jessee, Academic Planning and Operations, connected to the area through his family roots and his ownership of a cabin, served as part of the technical team that put the book together. Jessee, Barbara Mahler, and recently deceased Dorothy Hill are among the authors.

"The book," said Jessee, "began in 1987 on a cabin deck in Jonesville, when a gathering of friends and neighbors conceived of the idea of producing a pamphlet describing the special history and lore of the area." Thus began over ten years of immense volunteer effort that has resulted in the volume. Jessee describes it as a labor of love. Writes Jessee, "The contributors' affection for this corner of the West is as evident today as in August 1896 when Rosa Miser wrote to her niece Jenny Jones, `I tell you Jenny, this is a pretty place, and only 35 miles from Chico…Here the mountains are so close to the valley… and so close to our hearts.'

Jessee describes the area: "A map of Butte County, California, shows an arm stretching from the Sacramento Valley northeast into the high mountains of the southern Cascade range. The upper reach of that arm is the `small corner of the West' brought alive in the volume." The histories of Butte Meadows, Chico Meadows, Jonesville, and Humboldt Road are rich with events that affected California and the West as a whole, said Jessee.

"Men and women of every persuasion—gold seekers, homesteaders, sheepherders, cattlemen, horsemen, muleskinners, stage coach drivers, loggers, millworkers, flume tenders, railroaders, firemen, foresters, fishermen, hunters, campers, and those just seeking physical and spiritual recreation for a day, a week, or a whole summer—have found a haven here," writes Jessee. Each has left a legacy and so many tales to tell.

Jessee gives special credit to Greg Berryman, Communication Design, Chris Ficken, Instructional Media Center, and Claudia Vinsonhaler, Academic Planning and Operations Office, who gave hundreds of hours of their own time to the project, even though they had no personal connection to the area. "The book reflects Greg Berryman's artistic design," said Jessee. Chris Ficken did the illustrations and reproduced maps, a project that ended up taking twenty more times the work than he anticipated. "My guess is," said Jessee, "that they saw and appreciated the enormous cooperative effort going into the work."

Of the eight hundred copies of Small Corner of the West, printed by Larry Jackson, Jessee estimates that almost 600 have been sold. and 200 copies of the $49.95 book are available at the AS Bookstore and through the Butte Meadows/Jonesville Community Association, First Christian Church on West Sacramento, 9-12, Wednesday through Friday.

KM with Jim Jessee