Sutter Buttes

Margit Sands was born virtually in their shadows. Ira Heinrich discovered them as a boy. Walt Anderson was introduced to them as an adult. Each first encountered the Sutter Buttes at different times in their lives, but like many others they all have come under the mountains' spell.

The state Parks and Recreation Commission has picked a 1,785-acre site in the Sutter Buttes for California's newest state park. The new park won't be open to the public soon. It's surrounded by privately owned land and can be reached only by a rugged dirt road. The state bought the Peace Valley site for $2.9 million in 2003.

The state Parks and Recreation Commission has picked a 1,785-acre site in the Sutter Buttes for California's newest state park. The new park won't be open to the public soon. It's surrounded by privately owned land and can be reached only by a rugged dirt road. The state bought the Peace Valley site for $2.9 million in 2003.

Margit Sands was born virtually in their shadows. Ira Heinrich discovered them as a boy. Walt Anderson was introduced to them as an adult. Each first encountered the Sutter Buttes at different times in their lives, but like many others they all have come under the mountains' spell.

California's Great Central Valley doesn't get the same kind of attention as some of the state's other draws--the Monterey Peninsula, the redwood forests, Yosemite. But the area, 430 miles long and up to 75 miles wide, covering almost 15 million acres, has its own mystique. It produces more than one-fourth of the table food grown in the United States.

BEAUMONT--A carnival and live music will be highlights of the Cherry Festival, Thursday through next Sunday, June 3-6. On Saturday, there will be a cherry pancake breakfast at 6:30 a.m. ($3.50 adults, $2 ages 12 and under) and a parade at 10 a.m. Stewart Park, 8th and Orange streets. Carnival: 5-10 p.m. Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday, 6:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. $1; under 12 free. (909) 845-9541.

Chico offers excellent places to hike within a drive of an hour or two of the city, but Bidwell Park is the place to hike close to town. Visitors passing through the area will enjoy joining the locals for a hike or a dip in the swimming holes along Big Chico Creek. Bidwell Park slumbered in obscurity until very recently, when the April issue of Walking magazine listed it as one of the nation's top 10 wildflower walks.

It was like a lottery-winning moment for birders. I looked up through the windshield, and there it was: brown and striped, gliding toward a tangle of reeds a few feet from our car — an American bittern. Bitterns are common at Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, but they're elusive and rarely seen. Even an ornithologist friend has seen only two or three. Gray Lodge is one of more than half a dozen wildlife refuges in the Sacramento Valley, a habitat-rich basin that comprises the northern end of the Central Valley from Redding south to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

We camped near the lake, and in the morning I was awakened by a noise like the rush of a distant railroad train. I saw a long line of fluttering white in the far distance which represented, I found, an immense body of wild geese. . . . --New York journalist Charles Nordhoff, in an 1873 travel guide to California It was dusk at Gray Lodge. To the south, the formidable Sutter Buttes were silhouetted against a sky streaked with lavender and orange, the last remnants of a sunny day.

To many motorists, Interstate 5 north of Sacramento seems to go on forever. Fortunately, relief from California's "ag country" autobahn is possible at two state recreation areas on the banks of the Sacramento River. These small parks--Colusa-Sacramento River and Woodson Bridge--offer an opportunity to tube or swim the river, and to get an up-close look at both the natural and cultivated sides of the great Sacramento Valley.

Until the Louisiana Purchase, the country west of the Mississippi River was largely a blank space on the maps of the United States. But after the Lewis and Clark expedition to the shoreline of the Pacific, reports, stories and rumors of this new frontier captured the imagination of pioneers and politicians. By the 1840s, the westward movement began a steady intrusion into these vast spaces that Mexico considered its own by right of first discovery, and the establishment of missions, military outposts, and settlements.