November 6, 2025
Story collected by E. Vegvary and Karyl Clark
Written by E. Vegvary

Inexplicably, Butte County has just chip sealed the mile-long Mud Creek Road. Parts of it were even asphalted. Locals have been surprised by this. For years, residents living on or past Mud Creek Road have asked the County to repair the road. Throughout the winter of 2023 – 2024 the road was routinely impassable when snow was on it. The road is now pristine. But ninety-six percent of the homes it services have been destroyed in the Park Fire.

As usual in Cohasset, information is difficult to come by and officials rarely keep the community apprised of current events or decisions being made on their behalf. Explanations are even rarer.

Jesse and Jessie Montgomery drive up from Chico to meet us at the corner of Cohasset Road and Mud Creek Road to lead us back to their property. Their home was situated at the furthest eastern edge of Cohasset. The “quick” way is via Mud Creek Road, but this morning, the County is graveling the gutters. Through traffic is not allowed. We drive back down Cohasset Road, up the paved portion of Vilas Road and take Ponderosa.

The route up and down Ponderosa is rough. Physically and emotionally. The road is dirt, rutted, and edges steep canyons. The eastern Cohasset forest was destroyed in the fire. It burned hot and the destruction is total. The burn scar here is unlike that of the main roads of Cohasset and Vilas. Nothing is left but burnt trees. It’s difficult to remember the dense underbrush that once created a sense of deep forest isolation.

We climb and descend. The road gets even rougher as we pass the gate that leads over to Forest Ranch. This was one of the many open backroads the community once enjoyed with the right vehicles. It had also long been considered a viable evacuation route for Cohasset. Politics intervened and Ponderosa is now gated and locked by private parties. Old timers remember the summer of 1990 when the Cohasset Highway was intermittently closed for widening and paving and Ponderosa was a necessity, used throughout the day by residents for ingress and egress.

The last ascension is breath-taking. Even before the view was widened horizon to horizon by the Park Fire’s ruination of the forest, it’s apparent that the Montgomery’s must have had a gorgeous experience of Lassen Foothill living; the trees stately and tall and the knoll the couple called home verdant and cool and magical in the way that deep woods can be. Now, it evokes a sadness that transcends tears. It’s a suck-breath experience of shock and loss and it’s apparent that both Jesses are traumatized. This is only the third time they’ve returned to their property since the fire.

What do you do when your dreams have been reduced to twisted metal and ash? Your animals: two beloved dogs, chickens, turtles and honeybees have perished?

The future of so many Cohassians has shifted into the present, getting through one day at a time. This in place of what had been hope-filled plans and daily contentments.

The couple wander about for a few minutes. Jessie, forty-six, encourages their three dogs to run, Jesse, forty-seven, spies a picnic table bench in the rubble of his property and carries it into a spot of shade. There is a shocking amount of sunshine on the ridge now. He sits down and looks around. One feels that it’s only respectful to be quiet for a bit. Allow him to digest and process and compose. Jessie wanders far and calls out small discoveries before she finally joins her husband on the bench.

This couple radiates deep pain but appear resigned to keeping their grief controlled. It’s apparent that they are stronger together and their first and foremost concern is the other’s emotional stability and safety. Their relationship is the indestructible part of both their lives. Though they’ve been together since they were teenagers, twenty-nine years, they are newlyweds. Rita Autrey officiated their wedding ceremony last fall at the Maple Creek Ranch.

They had been living in Campbellville, eight miles above Cohasset, since 2012, moved down to Upper Cohasset in 2016, and purchased this property in 2018.

“We went through one winter?” Jessie wonders aloud.

“Three winters,” Jesse answers. “And snowmeggedon.” He’s referencing the feet and feet of snow that fell on Cohasset in February of 2023.

They decide they moved onto the property in the spring of 2021.

Jessie discusses the property. “Forty-nine acres. It had the A-frame and a cabin.”

Jesse, “Yeah, it had the A-frame. And I basically just remodeled the A-frame. Put a giant redwood deck around almost the whole thing.” He looks over at the destroyed house. “Wow. They were in the process of finishing it at the time of the fire. We were about ready to move in. Wish I had not done that because that would have been $30,000 to help us to get our lives going again now.” He grimaces as he laughs.

“Mark (Wolford) milled a bunch of the wood for this house. The wood was stored at their house for our deck and everything. We'd be able to drop all the stuff there and load it up into the blue truck that burned up here. Ladder rack, it was a work truck. The people that were working would park their cars there because they worked for Rachel before. They would load up the wood and come up and do the work.

“Over the years we’ve had so many friends from up here working on the remodel.” He begins listing names. “Billy did the plumbing, Mark did the electrical, Elijah did the drywall. He was just finishing up the day of the fire! Justin and Brian started the framing. Sebastian and Kyle skinned the logs we cut from the property here to re-do the floor joists and roof joists. Jim helped finish the upper deck. Roy and Justin and Dean and Sebastian.” He wants to credit everyone. The community is close-knit. “So many others.”

Jessie explains they were uninsured. “There was no way to insure this back here. It's so far back. It's off grid. Fire hazard area. A risk assessment would have been like, this is a big time risk. I did not want to even go to town because I was afraid of a fire starting and I wouldn't be able to come up and get my animals. That was my biggest fear. But it's just a matter of time before an area burns, and obviously,” she looks around, arms wide as though embracing her forest, “it ain't burned in a long time.”

Her husband finishes the thought. “Ticking time bomb. You just kind of know that. Living in in the wilderness. You know that sometime a fire is going to come through. You know.”

Jessie is descended from long-time Cohasset residents, the Meechams. “I have family in the cemetery,” she says. “My family has owned in Campbellville for a long time and then slowly sold it off as men died, women died.”

Jesse muses out loud, “I think we moved up here in 2009 or something. Right? 2009, 2010 we moved up to Campbellville.”

She corrects him. “No, I think that's when you got it. But we didn't live there. Because we were still living in Mendocino.”

He nods and adds, “We actually lived up in a cabin right above Bennett Springs for years before that, before we moved to Santa Barbara and went back to school. And then moved to Mendocino. And when we were in Mendo, bought some of the property over here that I told her—”

She interrupts. “He told me. He told me he would get it for me when we were like, heck, young. Because that fire had went through before.”

Jesse says, “The Campbellville Fire, 1990.”

She continues. “I was thirteen when that fire went through. They were building the new road. Right? Cohasset Road used to be super narrow and no guardrails.

“And yeah, there was a little cabin down where our cabin was, and it had burned in that ’90 fire. We would go over there because it was tight quarters in our cabin with my parents. So, we would go over there to, you know, do stuff. Yeah. And, yeah.”

He smiles. She giggles delightedly.

“And that was back in 2000,” he says.

She reminisces. “It was a nice spot next to the creek, and there was just the cement slab left, you know. But we'd go stand on it and I was like, one day, I hope we have this piece of property. And he bought it. It went up for sale and he bought it.”

They smile at one another. He pulls her under his arm.

“Wednesday morning was like any other morning,” Jessie begins their story of the Park Fire, the evacuation, the agonizing experience of that last week of July.

Jesse jumps in. “I was on my way back from somewhere, right? Because you were here. I was coming home, and we heard that there was a fire. I looked on my phone and it was oh car on fire in Upper Park and people were posting a picture of the guy going we saw this guy push his car, you know, and at first that's what it was. It wasn't even like there was a solid story yet, you know.

“When I got up to the top of the property, you could see the big plume of smoke, and I was like, well.”

Jessie had her two nieces and nephew visiting with her. “Eight, ten and twelve. Because they come to Auntie's for the summer, you know? We were we were in our third week. They had been here the two weeks. It was last week. We were halfway through it.”

Their accounting becomes rapid fire, and they start and finish one another’s sentences with ease.

Jessie continues, “It was going to Richardson Springs. Richardson Springs was in evacuation already because it went up on them quick. I said, Richardson Springs is being evacuated, babe. We're watching the warning map, you know, cause it turns yellow. I was watching it move up Cohasset.”

“That's when you told me to go,” Jesse says.

She agrees, “And I told him go tell my dad that we're in a warning. So, he should just be prepared. He lived up top in a trailer he just bought. We might have to leave, you know? And then he was gone for, like, an hour.”

Jesse, “It wasn't an hour. It couldn't have been an hour.”

“Well, it felt like an hour.”

*Courtesy Jesse Montgomery. Looking southeast from private and locked gate. July 24, 2024*. 5:51 PM

Jesse, “I saw the smoke. I wanted to get a better look at it because we still wasn't under evacuation. I wanted to get a better look at it, so I drove down the road to where that gate was when we came up. Right when the road stopped being nice and you got to the gate. And I got to there, and then I could see it and it was still going this way.” He pauses. “The wind changed direction and started blowing this way. When it turned and came this way I said, oh, we have to go. I didn't even know that they had now put out the evacuation thing because—

“He thought we were still in a warning.”

“I thought we were still in a—”

“Warning. It had changed while he was gone. I was like literally freaking out.”

“I flew back up here and said, babe, we got to go. She says, I know they're telling us to leave right now.”

“Because I had Watch Duty. I had watched it all go down and I was getting the three kids packed in the car.” She gets quiet quickly. “And then our two dogs … got out and ran.”

“Off and ran. They burned up somewhere up here.”

“They ran off. Chica and Dottie. But I just had to get the kids in. I had them pack all their stuff in my car and there was no room for anything else except them and their stuff and the dogs that I did have left.”

Jesse, “That truck that's burnt, right up there, was the first truck we loaded up with our stuff.”

“Some of the stuff we got because I got the file cabinet stuff. For some reason, that's all I could think of. Like all my mom's albums burned, all my family stuff. Burned.”

“All of our art.”

“Everything burned.”

“So much stuff. I had these beautiful Salvador Dali's …”

“The truck died, and we had to go get a different truck. It was pretty chaotic.”

“That was a diesel truck. We got up there and it died on us, and it wouldn't restart. I had to put it in neutral, you know, back down until it stopped and then ran up to get the other truck.”

“Which had like a water tank trailer hooked to it and a water tank in the back of it.”

“And drive down. And then her and I shuffled the stuff from one truck to the other truck, and we hardly got nothing. We got just a handful of clothes and some papers. Some paper.

I got my PlayStation Five. Because I literally thought we were going to go to a motel room. They were going to catch this fire. It was going to be no big deal. Wanted to have something to entertain the kids. Thinking everybody is coming back.”

“We had so many planes in the air. So many planes and helicopters. Right? They’re gonna get this. Look at how many planes they have on this shit. I was like counting them all on flight tracker. I wasn't thinking, oh, you should grab your family albums.”

“Your brain just goes, oh, yeah, what do I even grab. We gotta go.”

“We get up there,” she points up the hill to where her father’s trailer had been, “and this man is standing out there with no shirt on, no shoes on. I'm like, what are you doing? He says, getting ready to take a nap. I'm like, no you're not. Get your shit and get it in your truck because we have to go now.”

“We were the last vehicles they let down Cohasset Road.”

“We looked like we were gonna drive through the fire, but it was just coming up over the thing. It was crazy.”

“Right before it jumped the road. We made it.”

*In the narrows on Cohasset Road. Just before Jack Rabbit Flat where the Park Fire jumped the road. Courtesy Jessie Montgomery. July 24, 2024. 7:25 PM*

“We're in three cars. My dad has his truck.” She indicates Jesse. “He was in a truck with my nephew, and then I was in the truck with the two girls and all the dogs.”

“We went out Mud Creek.”

“All the way to the end of Mud Creek and Cohasset. We didn't take Vilas at all.”

“The road was empty.”

“Yeah. It was. There was no one.”

“We were the last cars that got out. We were one of the last cars.”

“They turned around the rest behind us.”

“The cars behind us.”

“Rosa and Paul were just behind us, and they got turned around. I was scared to death for them because they're not from up here. They haven't known the area. She called and she's like, what do I do? Where do we go? They did the food for our wedding.”

“Tacos.”

“I saw the sheriff deputies come up after I was already on the pavement and going down. Down by the Cohasset store. I passed a couple of them going up and then that was it. We get to the bottom of the hill, and they have it where you can't come up anymore. Down on Keefer. They had it blocked there.”

“As soon as we're getting by the airport, all of a sudden there's a hundred fire trucks coming up. Sirens going.”

*Smoke plume looking east from the valley. Cohasset Road by the Chico Airport. Courtesy Montgomerys. July 24. 7:50 PM*

A friend texted them as they were evacuating, offering them his vacant property as a safe and secure haven. Then began the wait.

Jessie said they had hope, though. “I thought that this area would still be okay because it didn’t burn for two more days. It didn't burn until the third day.”

“I'm watching it on the app. We're still good. It still hasn't come.”

“I think it crept around back and then came back up or something like that. I don't know.”

Jessie shifts directions, her voice filled with sadness and resignation. “Our place burned at night because my beehives that survived were right up there. Well, the hives survived. But not the bees. But the bee hives were full of bees. Bees aren't flying around at night. They're inside. It had to have either been at night or early in the morning before the bees were active enough because they would have left. But if it comes at night, they're not leaving. You know, they just sit in there.

“So, they had all died. But the smoke killed them all because the hives weren't burnt, right? There was a little bit of blistering on the back of one of them from the heat. But that was it.

“And then also the chickens had to have been roosting when the fire came through, because they were all still right here, you know what I mean? There was too many of them inside the yard for it to be daytime because I had opened the gate and made sure they could get out and they love coming out. So, they would have been out in the yard, and I would not have found so many. But they were hunkered under a ledge on that plastic hen house out in their yard. There was a bunch wedged under there, like they had went under there to hide.”

Jesse shifts back to the evacuation. “People were texting us. Justin (Autrey) said that he was going to stay. But honestly, since I've known Justin, we've always talked about the fire. And we've always known that Justin was going to be the one that leads everybody out. And he was. He knows the roads because he's lived up here forever. First time we met Justin we were hiking out.

“We were living in Campbellville, like we said back in the days, right?”

“We had no vehicle, and we had to hike all the way from Campbellville to town just to go get groceries back then.”

“It had snowed. So, we were walking out, and that was before people were up there. So, there was no traffic.”

“There's no traffic. And then all of a sudden there's this like sixteen-year-old kid.”

“Fifteen, I think, because he didn't have his license yet.”

“He said I can take you as far as Mud Creek Road. Awesome! Wow! Awesome ride all the way out of there.”

“Then we didn't meet him again until probably twenty years later when we moved back.”

The two Jesses are friendly, outgoing, and enjoy friendship and kinship.

Jessie stands up and raises her voice. “The morning was normal. The afternoon was even normal. And then, all of a sudden it was very fast.”

Jesse agrees. “That's what it looked like. Real quick.”

Jessie, “I saw the video of the guy do this. The only reason we have that guy is because somebody saw him. It was on Watch Duty as the park fire before it even had a name. People were talking about it already online on Facebook because someone had witnessed this guy do that. That's where I was watching it at first. From there it happened really fast, I feel like.”

Jesse shakes his head and mentions, “I noticed an article say that we had three days to evacuate. I was like, what the hell?”

“That’s bullshit.” Jessie isn’t outraged, she’s broken-hearted. “That’s making us sound like we just were, la la la. You know, it wasn't like that. And then all our shit burned.

“If I had three days, I would have used the tractor to clear, make sure everything was cleared. You know what I mean? Spent time securing the property, you know. Sprinklers going and wet some shit down, you know?”

He is nodding and finishes the conversation. “I wish I would have put a sprinkler on the house from the pool that was right next to it. At least we would still have somewhere to live.”

The Montgomerys are purchasing a property in the valley. Jesse is buying the house they evacuated to on July 24th and have been living in since. At this time, neither one is considering returning.

He explains. “Because we'll never feel comfortable living up here. She’s afraid.”

She nods. “There'll be more fire. I feel like,” she pauses, “well, the brush is going to grow back. Same situation as before. I mean, I don't want to live in the middle of the woods.”

He isn’t so certain. “I think within the next five years we may be back.”

“No,” she says. “That's where I'm at with it. I don’t want to lose something precious again.”

There is trauma upon trauma. Losses that cannot yet be grieved because there is simply so much loss.

Jessie had spent the past few years not leaving her home at all. She didn’t want to go to town, she wanted to be home-bound. She was cultivating a deeply personal existence in her forest, with her animals and gardens, her husband and their mountain life. Now she’s forced to live in a place that before she couldn’t even bear to visit.

Everything has changed and change takes time.

Jesse has the final word. “Life is the most important thing. So, yeah, at least we're alive to go through all the hard times.”

Jesse & Jessie

Rosa and Paul

Lyle