Gotlieb Justus Diestelhorst came to Shasta in 1852 to grow produce and vegetables for sale, but finding the soil impossible, he and his wife Caroline settled on this 84-acre parcel in 1859 to raise a family and farm, with an extensive orchard upriver from their home, a huge vegetable garden downriver, and hay on the high ground toward downtown. After Gotlieb's death in 1903, his sons John and Charles continued the store and ranch, and Charles started the first dredge in Shasta County. With the advent of the automobile, the family developed an auto camp with 30 cabins, a gas station, and a store, supplied first by a huge water wheel and then by a very large pump, and it became a summer resort and popular swimming hole with bridge jumping and diving competitions, while the Riverside Dance Pavilion near the south approach to the bridge hosted big bands from Los Angeles to Seattle. Most of the resort was wiped out by the 1940 flood, and Gotlieb's descendants sold the property to the city for a park in 1977. At this same location, a ferry crossing on the Sacramento River was established in 1851 under license of the Court of Sessions and, after being known as Shaw's, Green's, and Hunt's Ferries, was purchased by Edward Reid in 1860. It served as the main river crossing on the road from Shasta, and after Redding was founded in 1872, from Redding to northern and eastern Shasta County, until a free bridge was built in 1884. Operated by E.A. Reid, it was sold in 1907 to John and Charles Diestelhorst, whose family had launched the ferry from their property and had bought 84 acres along the river in 1859 for $2,500 as part of Major Pierson B. Reading's Rancho Buena Ventura. After the Diestelhorst Bridge was completed across the river at this location in 1915, it was for a short time known as Reid's Ferry Bridge; the family sold land for the railroad trestle and bridge approach to the city, and the bridge remained in constant use until 1997, when the North Court Street Bridge was completed.