Shopping in the Foothills

Shopping in the Foothills Bald Mountain Nursery [Map]
6195 Bald Mountain Road
Browns Valley
CA 95918
(530) 743-4856

Challenge General Store [Map]
10136 La Porte Road
Challenge
(530) 675-2324

Destination Whimsey Gift Shop [Map]
16838 Willow Glen Road
Brownsville
CA 95919
(530) 675-9517
Featuring Genevieve's Garden and Dixie Lee's Portraits products, hand-crafted scarves, hats and shawls, cards and jewelry.

Dobbins Country Store [Map]
10320 Old Dobbins Road
Dobbins
(530) 675-2324

Foothill ACE Hardware [Map]
13860 Willow Glen Road
Oregon House
CA 95962
(530) 692-1841

Ray's General Hardware [Map]
9114 LaPorte Road
Brownsville
CA 95919
(530) 675-2383 or 692-1630

WeeBee's Antiques [Map]
Collectibles and Gifts
16850 #3 Willow Glen Road
Brownsville
CA 95919
(530) 675-0105

History

Browns Valley, Brownsville, Challenge, Dobbins, Forbestown, La Porte, Loma Rica, Oregon House, Smartsville, Strawberry Valley, Timbuctoo.

Browns Valley
Population 1,467. In 1850, James Myers, a miner of Long Bar and owner of the Brockman Ranch, hired one Mr. Brown to cut the wild hay. Mr. Brown discovered rich quartz laced with gold and purportedly prospected $12,000 before leaving the area. Nothing more is known of him. Within a year, quartz mining had reached a fever pitch of activity. A reef of quartz four to five feet high dipping to the west was near Brown’s campsite.

Brownsville
2007 population 1,230. The nucleus for the foothill community of Brownsville was a sawmill built in 1851 by energetic and enterprising Isaac E. Brown. The mill was sold in November of 1852 to Martin Knox and P. E. Weeks, who named the place Brownsville, in honor of the former owner.

Challenge
Population 243. By the early 1850’s, gold had been discovered on all sides of Challenge. In 1851, several well established travel routes met at or near Challenge. By 1863, most of the gold had been found. The heyday of Challenge Mills was from 1870 to 1890, when a small mill purchased by A.M. Leach was enlarged. The mill employed fifty men and as the company grew, Leach added a railroad. Cuts and fills of the old railroad grade, pieces of burnt trestles and in-place railroad ties are still visible today.

Dobbins
Population 598. Dobbins had its origin not as a gold town, but as a ranch. William M. Dobbins and his brother Mark D. Dobbins, settled there in 1849. Dobbins is most known for its hydroelectric plants. In 1895, the plant on the South Yuba River was transmitting power to Nevada City. In 1899, the Yuba Electric Power Company built a new powerhouse on the Yuba, between the Middle and South Forks. A supplemental water supply was developed by damming Dobbins Creek, forming Lake Francis. The Colgate Powerhouse transmitted power to Sacramento and the plant occupied a milepost position in California history. The length and high voltage of its transmission lines to Sacramento were the preliminaries to greater advancement in hydroelectric development.

Forbestown History [Website]
2007 population 769. Forbestown had its beginnings in the heart of the great California Gold Rush. Ben F. Forbes was among the throng of miners who came in 1849, looking for gold along the South Fork of the Feather River. He explored a distance up a side ravine, and found prospects so good that he opened a trading post in September of 1850, calling it Forbes Ravine.

La Porte - the end of the road
La Porte lies atop a ridge dividing the Yuba and Feather rivers watershed. La Porte was founded by a gold strike in 1850, which at that time was known as Rabbit Creek. In 1857, Rabbit Creek was renamed at a town hall meeting after the bank clerk, F.D. Everts of La Porte, Indiana. In 1867, the Alturas Snowshoe Club was formed. Snowshoe or later ski races were the first organized races in the world.

Loma Rica
Population 2,327

Oregon House
Population 1,512. In 1852, Larry Young built the Oregon House, which became headquarters to the Yuba Mountaineers military unit during the Civil War in 1863. Located twenty-five miles east of Marysville on the road to Camptonville.

Smartsville & Timbuctoo
2007 population 1,216. Once the most populated place in eastern Yuba County, Smartsville and Timbuctoo were both bustling gold rush towns. Smartsville is named for Jim Smart, a local hotel proprietor during the days of the Gold Rush. According to one legend, Timbuctoo was named after a negro who was mining in a ravine near the area.

Strawberry Valley
Strawberry Valley was probably named by Captain Mock in 1851, who came in with a group of miners and was impressed with the quality of wild strawberries found in the valley. Strawberry Valley quickly became the trading center for the surrounding area. The Soper-Wheeler Company, known for replanting trees since 1904, is still in business today. The one-millionth tree was planted in 1973 by California’s First Lady Mrs. Nancy Reagan.