If memory serves me correctly according to Gudde’s Place Name History of California, there are some 1,000 places in the golden state that has the appellation of “dry.”  Of course, Lassen County is of no exception, especially since the eastern portion is part of the Great Basin.

Today, we focus on a non-descript Dry Valley, sandwiched between Grasshopper Valley and the Madeline Plains.  While today there is not much there, that was not always the case. In fact for reasons that boggles the mind, by the mid-1880s, it attracted numerous homesteaders. By 1890, not only did this rural outpost have a public school, but a voting precinct, as well. They, too, had their own post office known as Addington. The good times would last for several decades. By the 1920s, changes caused by the automobile and World War I, the region was slowly being depopulated. By the 1940s, nary a soul lived there, the abandoned school having been removed, and the only permanent residents are to be found in the Dry Valley Cemetery.

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