Overlooked Chester
Chester, at the northernmost end of the Sierra Nevada, rarely gets submitted to CaliforniaFallColor.com. Perhaps it’s overlooked because it’s seen as too utilitarian a place.
After all, Chester means business. It has long been a logging town with utilitarian markets and stores that serve loggers and their families.
Running straight as an arrow through town is State Route 36, built broad for logging trucks. Rogers Field, the local airport, has a 5,000′ runway which is why it was chosen by the USDA Forest Service as an Air Attack Base for aerial firefighting aircraft. Yet, Chester is a welcoming destination.
Each Independence Day, Chester hosts one of the best traditional Fourth of July parades in California along Hwy 36, with decorated logging trucks, fire trucks, homespun floats, custom cars, marching bands, pancake feeds, clown cars, beauty queens and lots of innocent fun.
Look hungry and friendly enough as you walk past Chester’s mid-1900s loggers’ cottages, along side streets, and the locals who host front-yard, Fourth of July buffets for their neighbors will invite you beyond their picket fences to sample something they’re especially proud to have made. It’s that kind of place, genuine, down to earth and approachable.
Despite being near a national park, beautiful Plumas County and Lake Almanor – a great fishing and water sports lake – Chester has struggled to attract tourism, odd considering that it’s near Lassen Volcanic National Park, a stone’s throw from the Bizz Johnson recreation trail and surrounded by countless miles of trails for off-roading, hiking, biking and riding and streams for fly fishing.
Chester is just under four hours from San Francisco, slightly more than to Tahoe City but far less when I-80 is busy. So, why has it taken so long for Chester and Lake Almanor to be discovered?
Some years back, nearby Dyer Mountain was proposed as California’s newest ski resort. The ski runs through privately logged forest would have had the fifth-longest vertical drop in California and, at its base, a mountain community designed for remote work. But then, the dot-com boom collapsed, along with the resort’s funding and backing.
So, when Vishal Mishra’s photographs of Chester arrived, recollections of Chester and Lake Almanor flooded back. Such as: ordering pies before they’d sold out at Carol’s Cafe along the lake’s west shore, watching eagles swoop down with outstretched talons to snag fish in the lake, sipping a milkshake at an old-fashioned soda fountain in the Lassen Gift Shop, playing golf on one of three courses and hiking the Lake Almanor Recreational Trail through a forest of peaking aspen.
Perhaps it’s time utilitarian Chester stopped being overlooked.
- Chester (4,534′) – Peak (75-100%) GO NOW!
