Born in eighteen nineteen on the East Coast to a poor farming family, John Bidwell rose to become a major figure in California history as a pioneer, statesman, politician, prohibitionist, and philanthropist. In eighteen forty-one, at age twenty-two, he crossed the Sierra Nevada and arrived in California hoping to start a farm. In eighteen forty-eight he found a substantial amount of gold on the Feather River, and from eighteen forty-nine to fifty-one he purchased more than twenty-six thousand acres of land, including Rancho del Arroyo Chico. He participated in the Bear Flag Revolt, lobbied in Washington D.C. for California's statehood, achieved important advances in agriculture, founded the town of Chico in eighteen sixty, and was even nominated for U.S. President. In eighteen sixty-three he worked with an architect on plans for his twenty-six-room mansion, traveled to Washington D.C. in eighteen sixty-five to serve a term in the House of Representatives, met Presbyterian activist Annie Ellicott Kennedy there, and in eighteen sixty-eight the mansion was completed and the two were married in Washington D.C.