A day after the Dixie Fire swept through Greenville, the Gold Rush town in Plumas County was a hazy moonscape. Fire had engulfed the Sierra Lodge Hotel, the pizzeria, a bakery, and the Way Station that had recently opened as a bar and restaurant. Most of the old structures were gone.
By Thursday morning Dixie Fire had charred 322,502 acres, razed 45 buildings and damaged another five, staking its claim as the sixth-largest blaze in California history.
The fire erupted overnight, as gusty winds buffeted flames over the control lines in Round Valley, according to a Cal Fire report Thursday morning. Crews were struggling to get the upper hand, saying shortly before 8:30 a.m. that they had the wildfire about 35% contained.Firefighters battled the flames from the air but were unable to shield Greenville, a historic community with about 2,100 residents, whose economy is sustained by the logging, cattle ranching and Christmas tree industries.
In recent decades Greenville’s economic fortunes dipped. Unlike the areas around Lake Almanor to the north and Graeagle to the south, the community hadn’t drawn the needed tourist traffic to shore itself up.“It was a very vibrant town up until the early ‘90s, until the timber industry took a dive,” said Scott Lawson, former director of the Plumas County Museum and a fifth-generation resident of the county. “People used to kid about Greenville, because it had fallen on hard times, but the wealth of historical homes and buildings is amazing.”
