John Bidwell

John Bidwell (August 5, 1819 – April 4, 1900), known in Spanish as Don Juan Bidwell, was an American pioneer, politician, and soldier. Bidwell is known as the founder of the city of Chico, California. He served in the California Senate and then in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early life Bidwell was born in 1819 in Chautauqua County, New York. His Bidwell ancestors immigrated to North America in the colonial era. His family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and then to Ashtabula County, Ohio, in 1831. At age 17, he attended and shortly thereafter became principal of Kingsville Academy.

Life in California

In 1841, at the age of 22, Bidwell became one of the first emigrants on the California Trail. John Sutter employed Bidwell as his business manager shortly after the younger man reached California. In October 1844, Bidwell went with Sutter to Monterey, where the two learned of an insurrection by leader José Castro and ex-governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. In 1845, Bidwell and Sutter joined Governor Manuel Micheltorena and a group of Americans and Indians to fight the insurrectionists, pursuing them to Cahuenga. Shortly after Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, Bidwell also discovered gold on the Feather River, establishing a productive claim at Bidwell Bar in advance of the California Gold Rush. Bidwell obtained the four square-league Rancho Los Ulpinos land grant after being naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 1844, and the two square-league Rancho Colus grant on the Sacramento River in 1845. He later sold the latter grant and bought Rancho Arroyo Chico on Chico Creek to establish a ranch and farm.

Mexican-American War and military service

Soon after the outbreak of the Mexican–American War, Bidwell met with the leaders of the Bear Flag Revolt and drafted their constitution. He was appointed brigadier general of the California Militia in 1863. Around this time, in 1865, General Bidwell backed a petition from settlers at Red Bluff, California to protect Red Bluff's trail to the Owyhee Mines of Idaho. The United States Army commissioned seven forts for this purpose. One site was near Fandango Pass at the base of the Warner Mountains, in the north end of Surprise Valley. On June 10, 1865, a fort (eventually named Fort Bidwell) was ordered to be built there. The fort was built amid escalating fighting with the Snake Indians of eastern Oregon and southern Idaho. It was a base for U.S. Army operations in the Snake War, that lasted until 1868, and the later Modoc War. Although traffic dwindled on the Red Bluff route once the Central Pacific Railroad extended into Nevada in 1868, the Army staffed Fort Bidwell until 1890 to quell various uprisings and disturbances. Bidwell was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper when the explosion sent a piece of shrapnel the size of a quarter directly into his skull. Bidwell survived, but spent the rest of his life with a visible hole in his head.

Political career Bidwell was selected as a delegate to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention, but did not attend because of mining business. Later that year, he was elected to the California State Senate, serving a single one-year term. He ran for State Senate again in 1855, but lost to incumbent Know Nothing John B. McGee by just 187 votes. He supervised conducting the federal census of California in 1850 and 1860, under national direction by Joseph C. G. Kennedy. Bidwell was a delegate to the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston. He was the only West Coast delegate opposed to secession. He left the party soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, and in 1864 was a delegate to the National Union National Convention.

Congress That year, he was also elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican, serving from 1865 to 1867.

Rather than seek re-election, he chose to run for Governor of California in 1867, George Congdon Gorham by a vote of 167 to 132.

Later campaigns In 1875, Bidwell ran for Governor of California on the Anti-Monopoly Party ticket.

Fraternal allegiance Bidwell was a Freemason for a time but left the group. He said that allegiance to the fraternity "was pointless" in an October 17, 1867, letter to Annie Kennedy, whom he had been courting. His signature appears in the Book of By-Laws of the Chico-Leland Stanford Lodge No. 111 in Chico, California.

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Electoral history