Robert Colby

Paradise 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."