some say the ranch founded by Paul Lucas was called the Forest Ranch because of its location in the foothills 14 miles east of Chico along the old Humboldt highway, but it is also possible the present town (pop. 1,500) received its name in another manner. remnants of other stories, an orange butterfly, the apple orchard we haunted as children. the ranch had been established in the 1850s to supply beef to gold rush miners, forty-niners, but it soon became a leading lumber area. in the 1870s a V-shaped flume was built extending from near the headwaters of Big Chico Creek all the way down to where the Sierra Nevada foothills meet the valley floor. a small stream, bruised apples, and an arrow lost in the snow, the flumes are not still in use, instead logging trucks barrel down the highway at unsafe speeds.