Before the fire that destroyed almost everything here, Paradise was one of those blunders of American suburbia, a misplaced place that made little ecological sense.
It inhabited a California landscape that wasn’t quite rolling foothill or rugged Sierra but an in-between zone where Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and incense cedars kept the earth from baking like the great valley below.
It wasn’t long before the town was saddled with the sorry title of the largest community west of the Mississippi without a municipal sewer system.
Politicians and citizens alike paid little mind to sound planning or zoning laws or to safe spaces between houses and all that was kindling.
There were few good roads in or out.
Persons:
Douglas
Locations:
California, Mississippi