It did not take much for the City of Susanville to abolish its Planning Commission. On May 21, 2025, the City Council passed a resolution to make a commission a relic of the past. The Council will now serve in that role.
For me, personally, it sends a mixed message. On the one hand the City is seeking ways for economic development, yet, by getting. rid of the commission on the face of it, the City is less optimistic for its future growth.
For the record the Planning Commission was established on June 13, 1921. The first members were L.R. Cady, C.E. Emerson, J.J. Woodward, F.H. Bangham and R.M. Cook.
The grave of Isaac N. Roop, Susanville Cemetery, circa 1966.
It was not until 1914 that Susanville founder had a proper monument to mark his grave, even though he passed away in 1869. It was through the efforts of Asa Fairfield, the local Masons and Native Sons to correct that. You can read about the dedication here.
This is just bit of trivia. The two pieces of gray granite weighing approximately four tons, were quarried near the Perkins ranch (Sella, 2025) on Gold Run. It was Susanville stone mason, Robert Brodie that did work and placed the monument on Roop’s grave. Less than two years later, Brodie was the lead stone mason for construction of the Lassen County Courthouse.
Susanville’s Steward House, 1881. Courtesy of Dallas & Joyce Snider
Old Susanville Boy Gets Write-up
The San Francisco Daily News of August 8, 1914 after decanting upon education and its application to the real affairs of life of some length, elects as an illustration an old Susanville boy, who has climbed in the commercial and social circles of San Francisco.
“Mr. Abraham Lincoln Peyser, president of S.N. Wood & Co., is as fine an illustration of the theories advanced alone could wish to meet.
Born in 1865 and brought up in Lassen County, 170 miles from a railroad, by all fair rules he should have been a grand rube performer; and far beat from the purpose of this chronicle to deny that once upon on a time he was–howbeit, this will an give an unneeded opportunity for the perpetration of his standard joke that Heaven lies about folks in their infancy, while everybody lies about them when especially successful in business.
“Coming well-heeled to San Francisco at 16 to attend college, he went broke seeing the sights, and remembering well the admonitory effectiveness of certain parental willow switches, he forthwith annexed a job in Loomis Plaza store and began that pursuit of knowledge which has resulted in landing him at the head of one the greatest mercantile establishments on the coast; making him one of the leading exemplars of highly ethical business methods; and at the same time producing that unusual combination–a thoroughly educated and polished man who never passed a day inside a college wall.”
Note: His father, Samuel Peyser came to Susanville in 1861 and was that town’s first Jewish merchant. In the 1880s he owned the Steward House Hotel in Susanville.
600 Nevada Street, Susanville, circa 1911. Courtesy of Dick & Helen Harrison
If you have been the following news lately, this marks of the twentieth anniversary Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans. The City owned a vacant building at the corner of North Roop and Nevada Streets. The structure built in 1895, was converted into apartments in 1941. The City purchased the property in the early 2000s, and offered the apartments to refugees from Hurricane Katrina. Those individuals would be the buildings last occupants.
In 2008, the building was placed on the City of Susanville and Lassen County historic landmark register. The city would spend the next several years as to what to do with the structure. In the spring of 2014, the city had the building demolished.
Juniper Lake, at an elevation of 6,753 feet, covers an area of some 592 acres, making it the largest lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Interestingly the lake has a maximum depth of 234 feet. In the 1870s, the California State Geological Survey named it Lake Louise, but others had applied Juniper to it, and the latter won out.
Early day visitors to the lake were few. Its remoteness, along with its heavy winter snowfalls, usually did not make it accessible until June. By October, as a general rule, the snow returned, again making the place inhospitable.
In 1889, a San Francisco speculator, Elbert Dodge, appeared on the scene and filed a 475-acre claim to the northwest shore of the lake. He did nothing with it, and another San Franciscan, J.P. Frenna, later acquired Dodge’s preemptive claim. The actual owner was the State of California, which designated it as school land. In 1892, Frenna purchased it from the state for the nominal fee of $1.25 per acre.
Juniper Lake has a long sordid story of summer home development, that never came to full fruition, due to its remoteness and short summer season. I understand that the Dixie Fire (2021) ravaged the area. I have not been back there or the Warner Valley, because I do not have go that far, to see the burn scars of that fire, and others.
In the early 1900s, the founders of Collins Pine Company amassed some 60,000 acres of timberland in the greater Lake Almanor Basin. It was not until the late 1930s, that they gave consideration to establish a mill there. In the fall of 1940, after much negotiations the Red River Lumber Company offered a mill site adjacent to Chester, along with thirteen miles of its main line railroad from Chester to Clear Creek Junction where it connected with the Western Pacific Railroad, which Red River estimated its value at $80,000.
Thus, the Almanor Railroad was born. Collins Pine changed it from a private line to a common carrier, should anyone in Chester desire to use it. Collins Pine had a lot of work to upgrade the railroad line. It also needed motive power, as it decided not to purchase any of Red River’s locomotives. At its Grande Ronde operation, it had discontinued its railroad logging in favor of truck logging. There it had at its disposal a Heisler geared steam locomotive, the 104, and it was put into operation on the Almanor.
The winds of change occur, and Almanor Railroad was abandoned, The railroad bed has been converted into a recreational trail
Hay scene, Murrer Ranch, Willow Creek Valley, 1926-Lola Tanner
Linda Hartwig had a few questions of hay derricks. She stated her family homesteaded in Klamath county starting in 1892. She wants to write up some of the family stories for a children’s series and wants to be accurate about the process. For a refresher see my post about the topic here.
Linda wrote: “I have a picture from the family archives of a hay stack being built with a hay derrick and what looks like a hay net. It is rounded on the bottom and is a huge ball of hay, so doesn’t look like it could be a Jackson fork. I need enough information on how it was released so the hay could fall onto the stack.”
The film includes a scene of the hay derrick (above) in action. This photograph is the hay stacking at the Titherington Ranch, near Standish, 1908. Courtesy of Betty Gorbet
There were usually two men on the hay stack and their job was to evenly distribute the hay, once the hay net was released. There was a man on the ground, who had control via ropes and pulleys to release the hay. An interesting process indeed. As a matter of fact in 1939, the entire operations of the Vic Christensen ranch near Likely (Modoc County) was filmed, and I believe it had short clip of the hay derricks in use. The film named The Cattleman, was done in part of Encyclopedia Britannica’s educational films of the era. I have it onVHS tape. I did have it converted to a CD. However, I lent the CD to some one, and they never returned it.
A hay stack and derrick, Tanner Ranch, Honey Lake Valley, 1935-Lola Tanner
After World War II there tremendous advances in motorized hay mowing machinery and baling of hay. In the early 1960s, the Bill Brothers of the Standish district were the last to do mowing of hay with horses and to use hay derricks.
If anyone has additional information about hay derricks in general, you are more than welcome to enlighten us.
On July 6, 1925, J.H. McClure in charge of the Southern Pacific’s district freight and passenger service headquartered in Reno was a guest speaker at the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce monthly banquet meeting. Just days’ prior to the meeting he had come to Susanville to do an inspection of the region. McClure was not pleased.
As to the passenger service he said, “Running a five car train with buffet observation car and the very best equipment, that the train would and many days carry but three or four passengers and not receiving that should be accorded it. While the stage lines between Susanville and Reno were loaded each trip.”
When asked about the tonnage, McClure was critical of the agricultural community. He stated the farmers should get “busy” with some real farming instead allowing so much of their acreage to provide wild hay that had no market value.
McClure’s assessment would never improve. In 1933, the passenger train service was discontinued.
The Gables, was a popular restaurant/bar near Johnstonville, then along Highway 36 (now Johnstonville Road) during the 1950s and 1960 and eventually closed in the 1970s. Every now and then individuals tried their hand to resurrect it, but invariably met with little success.
This falls under the category of dreamers and schemers. In 1930/31 there was great excitement with the arrival of a railroad in Big Valley. Actually it was two railroads, the Great Northern and Western Pacific which would link two miles southwest of Bieber. What to call to this soon to be hub of activity was open for debate. For a moment it was the general consensus to name it West Bieber.
Enter Byron Greenwood, who had other thoughts. Greenwood saw the potential of the railroad connector and he subdivided the. property there. He named his enterprise Big Valley City. When the Postal Department received Greenwood’s petition for a post office for the town, they denied the name. The Department had adopted a policy against three word names. In the meantime, the Great Northern designated their new station as Bieber, even though it was not in Bieber.
As the naming debate continued. it was suggested to call it Nubieber. On July 4,1931, a patriotic celebration was held. Mrs. A.W. Peterson, President of the Ladies Pioneer Club, gave a brief speech and then introduced Miss Vivian Goddard who christened the townsite of Nubieber by breaking a bottle of wine over the entrance sign. Nubieber, like so many speculative railroad communities, never reached the expectations of its promoters. In 1940, Greenwood traded all his unsold lots, (the vast majority of the town that encompassed 250-acres), along with his adjoining 630-acre ranch, to E.L. Robertson of San Francisco, for a 60-room apartment building in San Francisco.
