1950 Map of Chico

About this map

State College and the industrial activity of the Diamond Match Factory anchor the growing community of Chico in the late 1940s. The map reveals a landscape defined by water management and transit, where the Southern Pacific railroad cuts a diagonal path through the city and south past Barber and Stirling Junction. Beyond the urban core, the terrain transitions into the agricultural and riparian corridors of Butte Creek and Big Chico Creek, with large swaths of land dedicated to the Bidwell Park and specialized federal sites like the U.S. Dept of Agriculture Plant Introduction Garden.