 |
| Young musicians Downtown Greenville, California, March 2013 |
I spent several days of the 2012-2013 academic year in Plumas County, California. A good bit of that time was in Greenville, a town of about a thousand folks in an area called Indian Valley, less than an hour north of the county seat, Quincy. Plumas County is about the size of Delaware, but it's sparsely populated, with just about 20,000 residents.
 |
| Village Pharmacy (left) in a building dating to the 1860s, was destroyed in the Dixie Fire Wednesday night. (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013 |
The year I spent working off and on with my law students in Plumas County is documented in this report that my students and I produced. We were conducting what is called "participatory action research" in collaboration with Legal Services of Northern California, which had a grant to do do early outreach related to the Affordable Care Act's implementation.
Historically Mountain Maidu territory, Greenville is one of the poorest parts of the county--and, indeed, one of the poorest places in California. I took many photos (all (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013), and I'm going to share some here as a reminder of what Greenville was--and might be again.
 |
| Anna's Cafe, Greenville |
 |
| Downtown Greenville, March 2013, with Way Fair Tavern and Anna's Cafe in background behind the flag |
I say "might be again" because on Wednesday evening, Greenville was largely destroyed in the Dixie Fire, now the second largest fire burning the United States, and one of the largest fires ever in California. As the crow flies, Greenville is not many miles from where the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018. Indeed, the Camp Fire and the Dixie Fire started in the same area, both in the Feather River Canyon. The Camp Fire burned west and north from there, while the Dixie Fire burned mostly south and east. Also threatened is the Plumas County town of Chester, which borders Lassen County, and the fire is now also burning into Lassen National Park.
I'm featuring here a sampling of the photos I took in 2013 in and around Greenville. (I took many, many more, so may do a few additional posts featuring different aspects of Greenville and Indian Valley).
 |
| Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce and a bookkeeping service, Greenville, California, Spring 2013 |
 |
| Hotel in Downtown Greenville. The building whose corner you can see on the right is the Village Pharmacy, pictured above. |
 |
| Lutheran church, 2013. You can see after-fire photos of the church at the links below, where just the sign remains. |
 |
| Music studio Greenville, 2013 |
You can read more about what happened in Greenville on Wednesday here, here, here, and here. You'll see there photos of what's left of some of the buildings I photographed in 2013.
 |
| Hunter Ace Hardware, Greenville, Spring 2013 |
 |
| Greenville Rancheria Tribal Medical Center, Spring 2013 |
 |
| Greenville Library, Spring 2013 |
 |
| Way Station Tavern, which sat right across from Village Pharmacy and across Hwy 89 from Anna's Cafe. You can see after-fire photos of the tavern at the links below |
This latest, by Anita Chabria for the Los Angeles Times, features the story of Kevin Goss, a pharmacist in Greenville and also a long-time member of the County Board of Supervisors. (As a county supervisor and business owner, Goss is mentioned in the report my students and I produced). You can see a photo of his Village Pharmacy above, from 2013. He was in escrow to sell the business to a pharmacist in Quincy when the Dixie Fire destroyed it.
 |
| A woman was selling goat's milk-based products out of an outbuilding behind her home, on a residential street, Feb. 2013 |
Here's a Eulogy for Greenville, written by resident Meg Upton and published in the Plumas News. It talks about politics--though it puts a good spin on how community spirit overrides politics in Greenville because they're too small and need each other too much to alienate one another. And it reminds me of this very memorable photo I took in Greenville in 2013:
 |
| Greenville, California, Spring 2013 |
Speaking of politics, Governor Gavin Newsom visited Greenville yesterday and posted this video on Twitter. Mostly, Newsom focused on climate change's role in this disaster, but he also said the Dixie Fire and the disaster in Greenville is "about people's culture, their identity, lifestyles, a sense of place, memories that are attached to this, one of the oldest communities in California. This is about our families, our kids ... we have a deep responsibility to rebuild."
More photos to follow in a future post.
Post script: You can see after-fire photos of some of these places, including the Greenville public library, the Greenville Rancheria Medical Clinic, and the Way Station Tavern in this August 12 story from the Los Angeles Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment