The Humboldt Wagon Road

This book, by two local amateur historians, is pretty much what you’d expect from Acadia, which is the country’s foremost publisher of local-history books, having produced literally thousands of them. They tend to be light on text and heavy on historical photos, and this one is no exception. What makes this book exceptionally good for an Acadia publication is both authors’ strong personal connection to the subject—Marti Leicester, a retired National Park Service ranger, lives on the road, and David Nopel’s ancestors were pioneer settlers in Forest Ranch—and Nopel’s ability to draw upon his late father’s extensive collection of historical photographs and documents. John Nopel, a longtime Butte County educator, was a collector extraordinaire, and his many photos herein give the book considerable heft. A short introduction giving a history of the Chico-to-Susanville road is followed by nearly 120 pages of photos, each substantially captioned, showing the people, places and activities along the road from the year it was built, 1865, to the present day. For anyone seriously interested in local history, this is a must-have book.

Author talk and book-signing, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2 p.m., at Lyon Books.