Oroville is the county seat of Butte County, California, United States. The population of the city was 15,506 at the 2010 census, up from 13,004 in the 2000 census. Following the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of the town of Paradise, the population of Oroville increased as many people who lost their homes relocated to nearby Oroville. In 2020, the 2020 census recorded the population of Oroville at 20,042.
The California Zephyr was a passenger train that ran between Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California, via Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Winnemucca, Oroville and Pleasanton in the United States. It was operated by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q), Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) and Western Pacific (WP) railroads, all of which dubbed it "the most talked about train in America" on March 19, 1949, with the first departure the following day. The train was scheduled to pass through the most spectacular scenery on its route in the daylight. The original train ceased operation in 1970, though the D&RGW continued to operate its own passenger service, the Rio Grande Zephyr, between Salt Lake City and Denver, using the original equipment until 1983. In 1983 a second iteration of the California Zephyr, an Amtrak service, was formed. The current version of the California Zephyr operates partially over the route of the original Zephyr and partially over the route of its former rival, the City of San Francisco.
The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route directly competed with SP's portion of the Overland Route for rail traffic between Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah, and Oakland, California, for nearly 80 years. The Western Pacific was one of the original operators of the California Zephyr passenger line.
Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley. At 770 feet (235 m) high, it is the tallest dam in the U.S. and serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation, and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California, capable of storing more than 3.5 million acre-feet (1.1×10^12 US gal; 4.3×109 m3).
Lake Oroville is a reservoir formed by the Oroville Dam impounding the Feather River, located in Butte County, northern California. The lake is situated 5 miles (8 km) northeast of the city of Oroville, within the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area, in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Known as the second-largest reservoir in California, Lake Oroville is treated as a keystone facility within the California State Water Project by storing water, providing flood control, recreation, freshwater releases to assist in controlling the salinity intrusion into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and protecting fish and wildlife.
The California Western Railroad, AKA Mendocino Railway, popularly called the Skunk Train, is a rail freight and heritage railroad transport railway in Mendocino County, California, United States, running from the railroad's headquarters in the coastal town of Fort Bragg to the interchange with the Northwestern Pacific Railroad at Willits.
The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad is a 3 ft narrow-gauge tourist railroad in California that starts from the Roaring Camp depot in Felton, California and runs up steep grades through redwood forests to the top of nearby Bear Mountain, a distance of 3.25 miles.
The Keddie Wye is a railroad junction in the form of a wye on the Union Pacific Railroad in Plumas County, California, United States. Located at the town of Keddie, it joins the east-west Feather River Route and the "Inside Gateway"—formally, the BNSF Gateway Subdivision—which runs north to Bieber.
State Route 70 is a state highway in the U.S. state of California, connecting SR 99 north of Sacramento with U.S. Route 395 near Beckwourth Pass via the Feather River Canyon. Through the Feather River Canyon, from SR 149 to US 395, SR 70 is the Feather River Scenic Byway, a Forest Service Byway that parallels the ex-Western Pacific Railroad's Feather River Route.
The Diamond and Caldor Railway was a common carrier 3 ft narrow gauge railroad operating in El Dorado County, California, in the United States. The 34-mile railroad was primarily a logging railroad but also operated some passenger service.
The Western Pacific Railroad Museum (WPRM) in Portola, California, known as the Portola Railroad Museum until January 1, 2006, is a heritage railroad and archives that preserves and operates historic American railroad equipment and preserves documents, photos and information. The museum's mission is to preserve the history of the Western Pacific Railroad and is operated by the Feather River Rail Society, founded in 1983. It is located at a former Western Pacific locomotive facility, adjacent to the Union Pacific's former Western Pacific mainline through the Feather River Canyon.
The McCloud Railway was a class III railroad operated around Mount Shasta, California. It began operations on July 1, 1992, when it took over operations from the McCloud River Railroad. The MCR was incorporated on April 21, 1992.
The Sacramento Northern Railway was a 183-mile (295 km) electric interurban railway that connected Chico in northern California with Oakland via the California capital, Sacramento. In its operation it ran directly on the streets of Oakland, Sacramento, Yuba City, Chico, and Woodland and ran interurban passenger service until 1941 and freight service into the 1960s.
The Oregon, Pacific and Eastern Railway is an Oregon-based short line railroad that began near Eugene as the Oregon and Southeastern Railroad (O&SE) in 1904. O&SE's line ran 18 miles (29 km) along the Row River between the towns of Cottage Grove and Disston. The Oregon, Pacific & Eastern Railway Company incorporated in 1912, purchased the physical assets of the O&SE two years later, and shortened their total trackage to operate 16.6 miles (26.7 km) from an interchange yard with the Southern Pacific Railroad at Cottage Grove, east to a 528' x 156' turnaround loop at Culp Creek. The last of this track was closed and scrapped in 1994, and ownership of its abandoned right of way property was later reverted to the state of Oregon to become one of the first-ever Government/Private Sector cooperative partnership Rails to Trails programs in the US, forming the Row River National Recreation Trail. A successor corporation now operates a communications company and a narrow-gauge line at Wildlife Safari.
The Feather River Route is a rail line that was built and operated by the Western Pacific Railroad. It was constructed between 1906 and 1909, and connects the cities of Oakland, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The line was built to compete with the Central Pacific Railroad, which at the time held a nearly complete monopoly on Northern California rail service. The route derives its name from its crossing of the Sierra Nevada, where it follows both the North and Middle Forks of the Feather River. The route is famous for its impressive engineering qualities and its considerable scenic value. All of the route is now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad; however, the Union Pacific has transferred significant portions of the route to other lines. The portion still called the Feather River Route by the Union Pacific runs from the California Central Valley to Winnemucca, Nevada and has been divided into three subdivisions named the Sacramento, Canyon and Winnemucca subdivisions.
The Union Street Railroad Bridge is a vertical lift, Pratt through truss bridge that spans the Willamette River in Salem, Oregon, United States, built in 1912–13. It was last used by trains in the early 1990s and was sold for one dollar in 2003 to the City of Salem, which converted it to bicycle and pedestrian use in 2008–2009. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
A forest railway, forest tram, timber line, logging railway or logging railroad is a mode of railway transport which is used for forestry tasks, primarily the transportation of felled logs to sawmills or railway stations.
The Christmas flood of 1964 was a major flood in the United States' Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California between December 18, 1964, and January 7, 1965, spanning the Christmas holiday.
The Michigan-California Lumber Company was an early 20th-century Ponderosa and Sugar pine logging operation in the Sierra Nevada. It is best remembered for the Shay locomotives used to move logs to the sawmill.
Oroville is a former train station in Oroville, California. The building was constructed in 1910 as the town's stop along the Western Pacific Railroad Feather River Route. The railroad discontinued their passenger trains in 1970, leaving Oroville without rail services. The Chico Electric Railway had built an electric interurban railway line to the town with a route down High Street and its own depot two blocks west of the Western Pacific's.
