Last week, I was driving on a country road through a sun-dried valley where the high desert climbs into the mountains. This is the so-called Lost Sierra, the swath of mountains, rivers and forest north of Truckee and Lake Tahoe, and true to its name, when the sagebrush turned into pine, I felt far away from everywhere.

But then the trees cleared, and suddenly a golf course appeared, impossibly green, like a manicured mirage in the middle of the mountains. 

I’d arrived in Graeagle, a small town that’s little more than a cluster of quaint red cabins and white trim and might possibly be the happiest place in the Lost Sierra. Those cabins have been here, looking exactly as they do today — minus the fresh coat of paint — for a century.

Graeagle is situated between the banks of the middle fork of the Feather River and Gold Lake Highway, where opportunities for camping, hiking and mountain biking are plentiful. Its population is 401, with a median age of 68.5, according to 2022 census data. With two golf courses in town, it attracts a lot of retired golfers, but that’s not everyone here. The town is also a launchpad for outdoor recreation in the Sierra — hiking, mountain biking, fishing, camping. In Graeagle, it’s not so unusual to see retired golfers mingle with scratched-up, muddy mountain bikers. 

Still, on a midweek morning, I found the town quiet and nostalgic for a bygone era. There’s a gas station, a grocery store and a diner. It was almost as if I’d slipped past an invisible shield and landed in a real-life version of Pleasantville, if Pleasantville existed in the middle of the woods. 

I walked to a little coffee shop called the Graeagle Outpost. A sign on the front door said no more than two people could fit inside and that was no exaggeration. It’s a tiny space with an espresso machine, white cabinets and a menu posted on the wall with a list of beverages, hot and cold. Classic rock hits played on the radio. In the age of third-wave coffee that emphasizes speciality, this was a place that felt like a throwback to a time when coffee was on the dark side. I grabbed a tea bag from a display case on the wall and a poppy seed muffin wrapped in plastic. As the barista, Alissa Wagner, filled a to-go cup with hot water, she told me how her family moved to Graeagle from Reno when she was a sophomore in high school. At first, she didn’t like being so far away from her childhood friends, but eventually, the small town charm and friendliness won her over, and now the 22-year-old says there’s nowhere else she’d rather be than Graeagle.

“For one, it’s gorgeous,” Wagner said. “I mean, anyone who loves the outdoors would love being here. People are super friendly.” 

Businesses in Graeagle make most of their money during the two-month span of summer, Wagner said, when streams of tourists pass through. On the Fourth of July, the coffee shop is too busy and too small to let any customers inside. It serves coffees out the window. Business owners in Graeagle told me the summer crush of tourism is doable because they know they’ll get their town back in the off-season, when time slows back down.

“We all know each other. Maybe I don’t know their name, but I know their coffee,” Wagner said.

Little cabins on a train

A century ago, this town was a lumber mill, run by a man named Arthur Davies. He shipped those red cabins by railroad from another mill he operated in Sardine Valley, near Stampede Reservoir, and sawed them in half so they would fit on the rail cars before putting them back together again when they reached this town. It was called Davies Mill at the time.

Then, in November 1919, the Plumas National Bulletin reported that the California Fruit Exchange — a fruit-packing company with a presence across the state — bought the town, the lumber mill and 20,000 acres of forest for timber harvesting. The exchange planned to use the lumber mill to build wooden fruit boxes, and it expanded the lumber mill and employee housing and built a box factory, and Davies Mill became a booming lumber town.

Legend has it that the California Fruit Exchange held a contest among its employees to rename the town. It’s located where Gray Eagle Creek flows into the middle fork of the Feather River. So a bookkeeper came up with the idea to combine the two words and drop the “y.” Some people pronounce the town’s name as if it’s the two words said real fast: GrayEagle. Others sound like they’re slurring the two words together, almost like they’re saying “gray-gle.” 

In the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of workers and their families lived in Graeagle. Roads were built, electricity arrived. The town had a grocery store, a schoolhouse, a restaurant, a filling station and a fire department, which hosted an annual Christmas Gala. Eventually, cardboard boxes replaced wooden crates, and in the 1950s, the mill’s operations dwindled until it shut down completely in 1956. With no work and no economy, the town was deserted. Many of the mill buildings were burned down and only the foundations remained.

“Cardboard came and the mill closed. Literally, they all left and it was a ghost town,” said Leah West, whose family arrived in Graeagle shortly after the mill closed and defined the town’s next chapter. 

When the Wests came to town

In 1958, Harvey West, patriarch of a California lumber family, bought the entire town of Graeagle — including 42 homes — and 13,482 acres of surrounding forest land for $450,000, about $4.8 million in today’s dollars. 

The year prior, 1957, West’s son, Harvey West Jr., had moved with his wife and two children to Graeagle to make something of the town and turn it into a destination for tourists. Harvey Jr. wanted to raise his family in a small town and create a tight-knit community of locals and small business owners who would become stewards of the land, Leah West said. In time, it became a destination for tourists and vacation home owners.

Leah works as a real estate agent and we were sitting in her office, another quaint-looking red cabin that’s across the street from the Outpost coffee shop. An American flag hung off the front porch and a bench faced the road. Inside, the walls displayed black-and-white photos documenting Graeagle’s history. Leah’s dog, Lyle, is a small “Dorkie” — a mix of dachshund and Yorkie — and he was curled up on a little pillow on her desk, behind her computer. She also had on her desk a stack of folders, old books and photographs documenting Graeagle’s history.

Leah married into the West family. Her husband, Dan, is part of the third generation of Wests who own Graeagle. Dan moved to Graeagle when he was 5 years old, Leah told me. They met when Leah moved to nearby Portola in high school. 

The West family’s vision for Greagle coincided with the post-World War II era, when a growing middle class had money to spend on leisure, outdoor recreation and second homes. New roads and highways made traveling to the mountains that much faster and easier.

They established the Graeagle Land & Water Company to oversee the town’s operations. In the following decades, the West family created seven subdivisions in the town to build new homes, including one subdivision that hasn’t yet gone to market. They modernized an old hydroelectric plant that was built during the lumber mill’s time, and later, Dan West built a second hydroelectric plant.

The family established a volunteer fire department. They own two golf courses, Whitehawk Ranch and Graeagle Meadows. (Harvey Sr. loved to golf, Leah said.) And they also operate a forestry and logging business on the timberland they own, which family members say helps maintain a healthy ecosystem for the community and surrounding forest. Today, the Graeagle Land & Water Company does everything from leasing commercial buildings to local businesses to operating pro shops at the golf courses to running utilities. It is also working on a new sewer project.

“And basically, they’ve maintained and kept all these little red buildings all in good working order,” Leah said. “These were homes for many, many years. But now they’ve become retail shops, mostly, or restaurants.”

Leah showed me three photos, side by side, of Graeagle in 1937, 1961 and 2009. It’s the same row of cabins, but the trees are taller and larger. Nothing has changed in this town for almost 70 years, like the West family stopped time. 

To this day, Graeagle is a privately owned town. Dan and Leah’s son, Harvey West III (he goes by Trey) has been learning the family business since he was a young boy. In the winter, he’d help his dad plow snow off the streets. In the summer, he worked at the restaurant at the golf course, working his way up from washing dishes. He learned the ins and outs of maintaining the town’s infrastructure. Now, Trey works in the offices of Graeagle Land & Water Company, and any given day looks different from the next. Last month, when the Mill Fire broke out near Graeagle, Trey was building fire lines with his team in the woods.

“We’re trying to build a community,” Trey said, as a way of explaining his job to me. “That’s what we’re trying to do. A place where people want to live and be here, want to retire. That’s the whole goal.”

When we spoke, Trey kept checking his phone. He was waiting for word from his pregnant wife. Any day, his son would be born — another member of the West family’s fifth generation. 

“We all go to work every day and we wear a lot of hats because it’s a small community,” Leah said.

Because the town is privately owned, it doesn’t receive tax dollars. Property owners pay property taxes that go to the county’s general fund, which supports the fire department and county services. But Graeagle Land & Water Company doesn’t receive tax dollars to maintain the town or invest in the land, buildings or community amenities. The West family maintains the town commons — the park in the middle of town, the mill pond, the baseball diamond and soccer field.

“We’re not a municipality. We’re not a city. We’re not a town. We are private and it’s very unique and unusual,” Leah said.

Golf, mountain biking and wedding season

Whenever I go to the Lost Sierra, I pass through Graeagle. But I’ve never spent too much time in town. It’s always been a place for a quick stop on my way to or from a hike or a mountain bike ride, where I can pick something up at the market, or get a bite to eat at the restaurant, or jump in the pond to cool off on a hot summer day, or eat soft-serve ice cream from Graeagle Mountain Frostee on the far side of town.

I had lunch at Graeagle Restaurant, where I ordered a Reuben that came out quick and was everything I wanted from an old-school diner: lean meat, a pile of sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing on the side, perfectly toasted rye bread, served with helping of coleslaw. The waiter, Marcy Grossman, has worked here since 1977.

“It hasn’t changed at all,” she said.

“I love it,” Grossman added. “Never get anyone in here who isn’t nice.”

The one business in town that’s older than the West family is the Graeagle Store, founded in 1918 as the lumber mill’s company store, said Dale Lambert, the current owner. I found him in the back room, next to the ice machine, where he was scooping ice into big plastic bags to sell to campers passing through. Lambert was a timber feller, but in 1998, he bought out the butcher and took over the store.

There’s a lot of history and quirks in the Graeagle Store’s building, which is more than 100 years old. “Where the beer cooler is, that was the post office for 50, 60 years,” Lambert said.

But the business is consistent, supported by a steady stream of campers and mountain bikers, hikers and golfers in the summer. Weddings have become a big draw to Graeagle recently, too. Once the weather turns cold, the flow of business dies off fast. 

“It’s tough, it always is. You get a big boom in the summer,” Lambert said, adding that winter does 10% of the business as summer. 

The off-season, however, is also the silver lining of living here, as any mountain town local will tell you. When the tourists go home, the locals have as much access to the mountains as they’d like. What keeps Lambert here is the outdoors — snowmobiling, skiing, mountain biking, fishing.

“If you’re not using these mountains, this ain’t the place for you,” he said.

On that note, I got in my car, and with Graeagle in my rearview mirror, I headed for the trees.