although livestock grazing was the dominant economic activity in Butte County in the late 1840s and 1850s, Bidwell’s Rancho Chico was a center of other types of agricultural activity. crops included hay, barley, oats, peaches, apples, quince, pears, figs, and grapes. and in 1853 Bidwell was growing so much wheat he built the area’s first flourmill.

fields full of volcanic rocks
spewed forth during an eruption millennia ago

it is for actions such as
these that he is regarded
as the area’s leading man

fields marked by walls built by hand or machine
each rock upon another

what must it mean to be remembered as an upright citizen, philanthropist, and town founder, achieving the rank of Major in the Mexican-American War, Democratic state senator (1849), Republican congressman (1865–1867), and Prohibition Party presidential candidate (1892).

whose version of events is getting told?