A strike team from the Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit observes the Dixie fire on Monday. (Capt. Eric Limones, Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit)
By now you are no doubt aware that Indian Valley Post 568 no longer exists except on paper. Most of the town of Greenville is gone; also gone are Indian Falls at the bottom end of Indian Valley and Canyon Dam at the top end. Crescent Mills and Taylorsville remain — at least for now. Many of the members of Post 568 who lived in Greenville, Indian Falls or Canyon Dam, have lost their homes.
Most of downtown Greenville is gone, including the bank, drug store, fire station, pizza restaurant, Masonic Lodge, Cy Hall Museum, the Library, the Post Office, the old Hotel, Hunter Hardware, the Chamber of Commerce building, the Rancheria, Wellness Center, AND the LEGION HALL.
If you would like more information on how to donate to support the survivors of the Dixie Fire, visit https://calegion.org/fire-relief-fund/
This may well have been the last year that the Post Honor Guard [which is also the post color guard] could perform Honors ceremonies on Memorial Day at all of the Community Service District Cemeteries – Greenville, Crescent Mills and Taylorsville and four private cemeteries: The Gorman Family Plot off Pioneer Road, the Merino Family Cemetery across from and above the Taylorsville Cemetery, The Native American Cemetery on North Valley Road, and as near as be can get to where former post Commander Leland Washoe is interred in a private plot.
We do the ceremony from the Manual; before we begin we lower the cemetery’s flag to half-staff and raise it up again when we are done. We pray, we honor those called to their final post, we fire three volleys and play Taps. It is very moving. This year, despite the lack of publicity — only word of mouth — we had more people at the Greenville cemetery than we usually do. This was not true of the other places — but we did the ceremony even if no one else was there. We have been doing this for as long as any one can remember and the post was chartered in 1941.
Now, after the Dixie Fire had her way with Greenville, I don’t know what will happen. We did the July 4th parade in Taylorsville that we couldn’t do in 2020 and the Gold Digger Days parade in Greenville — both events somewhat reduced from normal years. We actually did a small version of the Veterans Day parade in 2020, with a car parade afterward.
This year there’s no main street left to Parade down. Many of the members are out of the county. My house is gone, my church is gone — almost everything that made Greenville HOME is gone, including the Legion Hall and the Post Office, the Library, drug store, both thrift stores, all of the places to dine out, the hotel, the hardware store [owned by a post member who was also a volunteer firefighter — and he also lost two homes], the Chamber of Commerce, the Rancheria medical and dental clinics and administrative offices where I worked when I first moved to Greenville.
So much of the town’s history was wiped out in less than 30 minutes as the fire roared through town, exploding propane tanks and buildings alike. There are videos and you may have seen some of them. I couldn’t watch after I saw the first one — and it didn’t show my house or the Legion Hall or my church — not that I recognized a lot of what was burning.
The one thing we are all grateful for — NO DEATHS. A few injuries, but no human casualties that we know of. There are a couple of people crews are still looking for but I’m hoping they are safe. People who left early might not have “signed out” from anywhere, they just left. They may not have told anyone they were leaving.
I pray that all got out safely and I pray for rain because the fire is still burning and still threatening communities in Plumas and Lassen counties. It is now the largest fire in California this year and still growing.
Commander James and Vice Commander Williams are organizing some help for us up here.
–Marj Goosey, commander, District 3
Author: caLegion Contributor
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