Lincoln in Oroville

So I'll spare the details of the project, but it went rather smoothly... as our first project with this particular client, I was really worried but everything came together, nicely. After we were finished, the City Manager and Police Chief suggested that we visit the hatchery.

As Oroville Dam interrupted the normal flow of salmon swimming upstream to spawn, fish ladders and a hatchery were built to allow the fish to get upstream, and it is an impressive sight. The City Manager was kind enough to drive us out to the hatchery and show us around and (a) there are a ton of salmon in the river. (b) salmon are huge, and (c) it is amazing to watch them jump the ladder.

(A picture of me in front of one of the ladder viewing windows is here)

After picking up my laptop and making sure there were no loose ends for me to tie before I left, I spent the afternoon playing tourist around the city. For a city of only 15,000 (serving a population of 60,000 in unincorporated areas), it seems like there is actually a lot to do -- and certainly a lot of history -- in Oroville. The feel of "downtown" is more "back east" than anything I can recall in California, and generally oozes character. I suspect this stems from the city's development during the 1840s Gold Rush.

As my first post from this trip mentioned, there is of course the Oroville Dam. Related to that are the two Bidwell Bar Bridges [Wikipedia]. The current bridge [today's photo] isn't really anything special; it was built in 1967 to replace the original bridge which would have been below the lake formed by the dam. That bridge, the Original Bidwell Bar Bridge, was deconstructed, preserved, and rebuilt, today carrying foot traffic in the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area [today's Photo, Photo, and Photo] and a National Historical Civil Engineering Landmark [photo], it's amazing to think of the bridge's history.

For one, it was the first suspension bridge in California (and West of the Mississippi, generally), second, the iron came from Troy, New York -- Starbucks Iron Works, to be precise -- around Cape Horn. In the 1850s. Pre-Internet, Pre-Telephone, The dawn of the era of the telegraph, and the sunset of the era of the pony express. The transcontinental railroad is still a decade off. Yet the bridge survives.

Speaking of surviving, another stop on my tour was the Mother Orange Tree, the oldest living orange tree in Northern California -- planted in 1856, transplanted in 1862 and 1964 -- and still producing fruit, though, with it's location at park district headquarters, I don't think anyone would have appreciated me picking one [photo].

Downtown Oroville has an interesting array of museums, including Bolt's Tool Museum which (from the outside) houses a shocking history of thousands of tools from construction to farming. Unfortunately the museum was long closed for the day by the time I got aimed that direction.

And since I have a super early flight tomorrow morning, I think I'll leave it there. You can see more pictures from this trip in the Flickr photo set here.

Lincoln