Fort Bidwell was established  in 1865 to keep Indians from attacking American settlements in the remote northeast corner of California.

Since 1890, it's been a Paiute Indian reservation. Today, the reservation is the center of activity in a community that is otherwise turning into a ghost town.
 
This ragged, faded sign, which points the way to the Fort Bidwell store, tells the story of this shrinking settlement.  When I reached  the store, it was locked and shuttered. A sign on the front of the building says the store was established in 1876. There is nothing to document when it might have closed.

This isn't the only vacant storefront in the town of Fort Bidwell. As I drove around, I couldn't find any operating businesses. The post office and volunteer fire department were the only signs that the part of Fort Bidwell outside the reservation is anything more than a handful of  residences.

The reservation property starts just west of the town. Most of the buildings that offer services and provide housing for tribe members are grouped around what was once Fort Bidwell's parade ground, which is now a children's playground.

Aside from the parade grounds, the only remnants of the days when Fort Bidwell stood guard at California's northeast border are a former  chapel (left)  --  a wooden structure that is more or less intact --  and the crumbling stone walls of what was once a hospital (below right).

A tribe member, who spotted me walking around the complex trying to find someone to talk to, pointed out these landmarks. He said over the years other buildings were torn down and replaced with new facilities as the tribe needed them. He said the historical features of the site weren't allowed to stand in the way of the tribe's progress.

There's  justice in this. When settlers came to California, the Indians who weren't killed or didn't die from diseases  had to  move forward. They had to figure out how to fit in to the new culture.

Military reservations are typically named after military leaders. Fort Bidwell is named after John Bidwell, Chico's most famous citizen. Bidwell was appointed a brigadier general in the state militia during the Civil War. He was charged with boosting public support for the Union war effort and suppressing political dissent.

Bidwell's wife Annie called him "general."

That a fort more than 250 miles away from Chico should be named after Bidwell shows the stature he attained as a California  settler. To see a place replete with signs saying "Bidwell" was one of the reasons I made the trip. The other reason was to explore a part of the state I had never seen before.

Until I took this day trip, I had never traveled in the northeast beyond Burney Falls. I like to see new places, but other destinations always seemed  to take  precedence. But the time finally came, on a weekday in October.

On the way to Fort Bidwell, I stopped at Alturas and had a latte at this coffeehouse (left).

Alturas is the biggest settlement in this region, but in most other parts of the state it would be considered small. I have no idea what keeps it going, aside from providing services to ranchers who live in the surrounding countryside.

It has some handsome old buildings, but seems to be well outside the tourist belt. The coffeehouse proprietor told me the  town's historic Niles Hotel has been closed for four years.

I then drove east through a range of mountains, entered the Surprise Valley and had lunch at this grocery store in Cedarville (below right). Both this store and the coffeehouse in Alturas were once banks.

The name Surprise Valley has always intrigued me. I had often wondered if I  would find  anything surprising about it if I ever visited it.

If I had to name it, I would call it Predictable Valley. It's right at the point in the state where the trees end and the barren landscape typical of the Great Basin begins. The only surprise is that  there is one last mountain range between the valley and the basin.

Fort Bidwell is at the northern end of Surprise Valley. On the way there, you pass by a lake that seems to be mainly a mud flat. This only adds the bleakness of the terrain.

On my first sweep through Fort Bidwell, I couldn't locate the fort.  Just north of the town I spotted a promising ruin of a building on top of a hill. A worker at the post office told me how to get to the reservation. She said the building I'd seen had nothing to do with the fort.   

Earlier in this post, I noted how the banks in Alturas and Cedarville had been put to new uses. In Fort Bidwell, all that remains of its bank is the crumbling vault.

California is often thought of as a place of frenzied, unending growth. But once I left the outskirts of Redding behind, I might as well have been in Wyoming. This is one of the most empty parts of the state. By the time I arrived in Fort Bidwell, I felt as if I had traveled 2,000 miles.