Robert Colby

Paradise (Ca) (Images of America) Robert Colby

It was more than 150 years ago that Uncle Billy Leonard took refuge from the hellish heat in the shade beneath a Ponderosa pine, breathing in relief to his companions: Boys, this has got to be Paradise! Or so the story goes. Yet it is no fiction that the settlement grew to be more than just a stop on the way from Oroville or Chico to the gold country. Although Paradise was surrounded by mines, it had little gold itself. Disappointed miners made a living cutting timber, working at one of the sawmills, or hacking out homesteads in the foothill forests. Diamond Match Company built a railroad to its sawmill, locating the depot a mile west of town in what was sometimes called New Paradise. For generations before houses began to replace its orchards, Paradise was an apple-growing center, home to harvest festivals that are echoed in today's annual Johnny Appleseed Days.