But this is Chico, too

This is the third post in my series on the history of Chico’s growth.

We last left off in the 1890s when the country was in the throes of an economic turndown. It put a damper on Chico’s growth.

But by the turn of the 20th century, Chico embarked on an expansion that would last for three decades.

It was marked by a major arrival and a notable departure.

The Diamond Match Co. acquired a 241-acre site southwest of Chico in 1901. Construction of its manufacturing plant took place between 1903 and 1906. For many decades, it was Chico’s largest employer. Because the company owned thousands of acres of timber and had a lumber mill in Stirling City, other wood products besides matches were made at the site.

The Barber neighborhood, named after Diamond Match president Ohio Columbus Barber, grew alongside the plant under the impetus of company executives, who formed an investment company to buy and subdivide the land. They were also the movers and shakers behind the establishment of an electrified streetcar system in Chico. They wanted employees from anyplace in the city to have a cheap, easy way to get to their jobs

Mainly because of the Diamond Match plant, Chico grew from 5,000 people in 1900 to 12,000 in 1910.

John Bidwell died in 1900, still land rich and cash poor. He had what economists today call a negative rate of savings. To put it bluntly, he was $350,000 in debt. His widow Annie was forced to sell all of her land, except for the grounds around her house, the property she donated that became Bidwell Park and a few other small parcels. Unlike in the previous decade, Chico now began to spread across the land the Bidwells had owned.

Houses began to be built along The Esplanade. A residence almost directly across the street from the Bidwell Mansion became the home of Francis Clough, the son Fred Clough, the Pacific Coast manager of Diamond Match, and his wife Ellen Stansbury, the daughter of Chico physician Oscar Stansbury. It was built in the craftsman bungalow style, which supplanted Victorians as the preferred type of fashionable residence.

Bungalows were built in all of the new Chico neighborhoods in the 1900s and 1910s: Chico Vecino, the Barber neighborhood and the area east of downtown and south of Bidwell Park.

In contrast to the laid-back bungalows, the public buildings that went up in Chico in this period were more formal and were inspired by classical architecture. The old city hall and post office are examples.

After Annie Bidwell died in 1918, a large parcel north of her house became the new site of Chico High School as well as a neighborhood called Mansion Park. O.E. Tracy, one of Chico’s first developers, was the land agent for Mansion Park. In the late 1920s, he built Chico’s first subdivision, Eastwood Park, in an English cottage style. By the 1920s it and other so-called period revival architecture had replaced bungalows as the most popular style of house.

By the end of the 1920s, Chico was a far-flung community, extending from 20th street on the south and Lindo Channel on the north. Development extended as far east as the present site of the freeway along the south side of Bidwell Park. Only the orchard lands to west resisted growth.

You could say that Chico was already suffering from suburban sprawl, but I’m sure most residents were proud of how much the city had grown and viewed the shady bungalow neighborhoods as idyllic, just as we do today.

The Great Depression and World War II would put an end to Chico’s expansion for 15 years. But growth would resume in earnest after 1945.

You can respond directly to this blog or you can contact me at sbrown@chicoer.com or 896-7773.