Gridley

History

Tribal groups, including the Maidu people, were settled in the region when they were first encountered by Spanish and Mexican scouting expeditions in the early 18th century. In the 1850s George W. Gridley, a wool grower and grain farmer who at the time was one of the largest landowners in Butte County, settled a home ranch west of the town site that was to be named after him. Gridley was established in 1870 when the Oregon and California Railroad was constructed north from Marysville. The railroad reached Chico on July 2, 1870. In the summer of 1891, a series of major fires "nearly swept away" much of Gridley, and the business district was nearly destroyed again by an additional fire in July 1905. By the end of 1908 there were some 500 LDS settlers in the Gridley area and their first chapel was constructed on the west corner of Sycamore and Vermont Streets in 1912 with a seating capacity of 1,000—the largest LDS meetinghouse west of Salt Lake City at that time. Following a fire in November 2018 in Paradise, California, 400 temporary modular housing units called the "Gridley Camp Fire Community" were erected at a city-owned industrial park in Gridley. In 2020, Gridley was the place where former NASA engineer and YouTube star Mark Rober achieved a world record of the World's Largest Elephant's Toothpaste Explosion with a height of , before subsequently breaking the record again with a height of in 2021.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Gridley has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated Csa on climate maps.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Turkey Vulture

  Cathartes aura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,189
• Great Egret

  Ardea alba Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,170
• Red-tailed Hawk

  Buteo jamaicensis (Gmelin, 1788) · Aves
  3,907
• Black Phoebe

  Sayornis nigricans (Swainson, 1827) · Aves
  3,768
• Red-winged Blackbird

  Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  3,695
• Great Blue/Cocoi Heron

  Ardea herodias Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,196
• Killdeer

  Charadrius vociferus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,111
• American Coot

  Fulica americana Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  3,101

Most recent

• M 2.72 — 2026-09-02
  5 km W of Hamilton City, CA
• M 2.54 — 2026-08-11
  9 km E of Rancho Tehama Reserve, CA
• M 2.54 — 2026-08-04
  15 km S of Hamilton City, CA
• M 3.85 — 2026-07-03
  15 km NNE of Alder Springs, CA
• M 3.01 — 2026-06-27
  4 km WSW of Johnsville, CA
• M 2.64 — 2026-04-29
  2 km NW of Granite Bay, CA