Maybert, California

California

To get rid of squatters, the Forest Service burned the last cabins of Maybert to the ground.

historicalpeople

Into the nineteen sixties, a few cabins still stood on a bench above the South Yuba River, and people were living in them without permission. The Forest Service got the landowner's blessing and burned the buildings down. Partly it was to move the squatters along. Partly it was the fear that someone camped in a dry canyon would start a wildfire. That was the end of Maybert. The town had grown up around gold-bearing quartz in the eighteen eighties. A hotel with a saloon, run by the Baugh brothers, hosted dances. One Fourth of July there was a tug-of-war between crews from the Yuba mine and the Eagle Bird mine, then a grand ball to raise money for the school. Thirty-two votes were cast here in the eighteen ninety-two presidential election. Today almost nothing is left, and the site is hard to reach, because the bridge across the Yuba is gone.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The forest service, with the property-owner's permission, burned the remaining buildings to the ground to drive the squatters out and avoid the risk of wildfire from people squatting there.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

  • Remington Hill, California 7.2 mi A man who helped build the ditches here made a million dollars, lost every cent, and died in the poorhouse.
  • Little York, California 14.4 mi The town's name was decided by a vote of miners, and the New Yorkers beat out the men who wanted to call it St. Louis.
  • Sugar Bowl Ski Resort 19.7 mi Goofy's famous holler started as an Austrian ski champion's yodel on these slopes.
  • Rollins Dam 20.2 mi The groundbreaking ceremony for Rollins Dam was the demolition of a railroad trestle that had carried three hundred million dollars in gold and silver.
  • Donner Memorial State Park 24.6 mi The pedestal under the pioneer statue at Donner is twenty-two feet tall because that was the depth of the snow.
  • Lake Tahoe Dam 32.4 mi A Russian-born engineer once tried to drain Lake Tahoe's outflow all the way to San Francisco.