Many visitors to Susanville when it was a frontier outpost during the 1850s and 1860s had positive comments about the community. One aspect in common, was its natural setting at the base of the mountains and two flowing streams. Well, there was one particular visitor, Major Gorham Gates Kimball of Red Bluff, California who was not impressed with Susanville when he passed through there on his way to Idaho. Kimball wrote in his diary on June 15, 1865: “This is a small town and a darn poor one—Indians ought to come in and kill the white man that would live there—it was made for Indians.”
It is interesting note, while Kimball in his opinion it was a poor town, three major businesses were established in Susanville. that year. David Knoch established his general merchandise store, to become one of the leading merchants of Susanville. It would last for three generations, later as Alexander & Knoch and finally Feher & Worley’s Big Store and it shuttered its doors in 1942. A.C. Neale and Zetus Spalding founded Spalding Drug, an institution that lasted 102 years. Lastly, was the town’s first bonafide newspaper the Sage Brush. It would evolve into the Lassen Advocate and chronicled the region’s news until 1987 when forced into bankruptcy.