Butte County, California: History
Butte County is named for the visually striking +2,000-foot (610 m) Sutter Buttes in neighboring Sutter County. Butte County was incorporated as one of California's 27 original counties on February 18, 1850. The county went across the present limits of the Tehama, Plumas, Colusa, and Sutter Counties. Suffragists from Butte County including Minnie Sharkey Abrams played a notable role in the women's suffrage campaign in 1911.
Between November 8 and 25, 2018, a major wildfire, the Camp Fire, destroyed most of the town of Paradise, the adjacent community of Concow, and a large area of rural, hilly country east of Chico. More than 80 people were killed, 50,000 were displaced, over 150,000 acres were burned, and nearly 20,000 buildings were destroyed. The Camp Fire was California's most destructive and deadliest fire.
On July 24, 2024, the Park Fire ignited in Bidwell Park, four miles south of downtown Chico. Ronnie Dean Stout II, a Chico resident, has been accused of arson for starting the fire by allegedly pushing a car that was on fire down an embankment. Over the course of the next 64 days, the fire expanded into Tehama County, burned 429,603 acres, killed one person, and destroyed 709 structures. It became the largest wildfire caused by arson in the state's history, the fourth largest fire in the state's history, the largest fire of the 2024 California wildfire season, and the second largest single fire in the state's history (as opposed to a complex fire, with multiple ignition points).