A TRIBUTE TO GREENVILLE

 The following is a short revised excerpt taken from my memoirs of my career with the Forest Service, while working on the Greenville Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest from 1977 to 1979.    It was one of the most pleasant small towns I ever lived in and associated with, including the friendly people, the scenic natural surroundings and historical values as an old gold mining community.    

There was the smell of wood smoke coming from the many house chimneys, the sound of the train bell ringing at the local saw mill and the howl of the coyotes during the late evenings.   Many of the buildings and old houses had steep tin roofs because winter here could be cold with snow a few inches  deep or a few feet deep.  Greenville was a small town of about 800 people at the north end of Indian Valley in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains.  Indian Valley to the south of Greenville is mostly cattle ranches with green meadows serving as summer pastures.  The towns of Taylorville and Crescent Mills are at the south end of the valley.   The many streams in the adjacent mountains drained in to Indian Creek, which flowed south out of the valley to the Feather River.   The main street of  Greenville off of highway 89, consisted of a coffee shop, an historic hotel with a restaurant, some gift shops, the ranger station and other small businesses.    There was a weekly news paper with its share of editorials on local issues.    One of the most frequent issue was how the Forest Service timber sale program favored the large lumber mills and was short changing the small operators.   There were a few cartoons in this local paper showing the Forest Service making secret deals with big mill owners.  Most people worked as merchants, mill workers, loggers, ranchers or for the Forest Service.   The largest employer was the Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) with a small log mill in Greenville and large log mill in Crescent Mills.   Some time in the 1980's the LP mills shut down, the Western Pacific trains no longer came in to the valley to take the lumber to market and the ranger station was closed after the Greenville District was combined with Quincy Ranger District.

Greenville was destroyed by the Dixie Fire in August of 2021.   Hopefully the coyotes continue to howl in the evenings and Greenville is rebuilt in the future.