WHERE THE H--- IS GRAEAGLE? Perhaps you have noted bumper stickers imprinted with those words. A lot of Vacaville residents know of this Plumas County unique hide-away, population 350, elevation 4300 feet, nestled among thousands of acres of pine trees.
Most maps will not give a designation of Graeagle, although nearby Blairsden, a stone’s throw away, is privileged to be in the listings.
I have written about Graeagle on several occasions following my sojourns there once or twice each year. Being about 60 miles north of Truckee, and bordered by mountains on all sides, the temperature at Graeagle in summer can hit the 100 degree mark or more.
Graeagle, and the vast surroundings are the property of land barons, the Harvey West family. The lumber mill which made the town popular about a half century ago, has closed, but lumbering is the main source of revenue in the area.
But it seems as though there is no spot in these good old United States which is remote any longer. The quaint red frame structures in downtown Graeagle, and the log cabins at the resorts, are now taking a back seat to modernization, with condominiums bringing from $90,000 up and selling like hotcakes, or you can rent a two-bedroom condo for a week at about $300.
Graeagle has a lifestyle all its own. Being unincorporated, it needs no mayor, no city council, no planning commission, and no meter-maid to mark tires. There’s a main street, prominent on which is a lone grocery store-post office, and a restaurant, along with a half dozen small shops.
The residents in that Plumas County hamlet cannot agree on the origin of the town’s name, arid in fact they could care less. Some suggest it came from the two words, Gray and Eagle. With all the squirrels doing the disco among the pines, I wondered why it had not been called Gray Squirrel. Nearby Portola derives its name from the discoverer of San Francisco Bay, Don Gaspar de Portola.
Just how this meandering Spaniard had his name attached to a town in the Sierras is quite a mystery. He was the governor of California at one time, and that’s perhaps a fairly good reason for honoring his name.
Inflation has not by-passed Graeagle. I have written on several occasions about the many fine restaurants to be found there, but on my recent visit there I paid particular attention to the prices on the menu. At one nice restaurant, a prawn dinner was at $10.95, and at one in nearby Portola, lobster and steak commanded a $13.50 price.
If you every decide to pay a visit to that part of California, don’t be disappointed if you cannot find McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s or any of the other popular fast-food franchises. You can’t even find a Pietro’s Pizza there, but there is a pizza parlor at Blairsden.
The crowded downtown grocery store (there’s no downtown Graeagle) is stacked to the ceiling with groceries, drugs, liquors, fresh vegetables and meats. You can find every thing from Rolaids to Swiss cheese, and also get your mail posted and delivered there.
If you contemplate going to Graeagle, you can stay at several resorts; rent a condo or a mobile home, but don’t go searching for night-life, because the only sounds come from the wind playing tunes among the pines.
Amazing is the fact that among all this solitude can be found an 18-hole, and two nine-hole golf courses, so if you like that sport you can idle away some of the days. You could go fishing in some of the creeks which feed the meandering Feather River. At night, the dead silence is broken by a Western Pacific freight train chugging away with its heavy load, threading through the nearby canyons.
Graeagleites are like most all mountain people. They are unanimous in the opinion that there is no place on earth comparable to their own habitats. As a waitress in a restaurant told me one day:
“You can have your people and your smog.” While she was telling me this the building rattled as a monstrous logging truck scooted along the narrow road, spewing diesel fumes and raising a cloud of dust.
People are finding Graeagle. The golf course parking lots are jammed with cars bearing Nevada license plates. The distance between cities is about 60 miles. Many Reno residents take their youngsters to Graeagle to show them just what a tree looks like.
Those Sierra Nevada Mountains are being invaded by people from the lowlands; people who are gambling that not too many “foreigners” will tread their way. But, despite the clatter of bulldozers cutting away to make way for more homes, there’s going to be elbow room in those hills for not only decades, but for centuries into the future.
As I played golf on the Graeagle course a few days ago, I looked at the tiny ball, 1.6 inches in diameter, and then looked around me knowing that California has 18 million acres of forest lands, of which Graeagle is a speck smaller than that ball.
At our condo, my wife put out a few peanuts for the squirrels, which they gathered gingerly, running off to deposit them for their winter food supply.
Those squirrels could teach us all a lesson - preparing for stormy days ahead.
Link: http://articles.solanohistory.net/7119/ | Solano History Database Record
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Vacaville Heritage Council