Dorris, CA

Dorris is a Siskiyou County city in Butte Valley, on U.S. 97 between Mount Shasta and the Oregon border. The city grew from the Southern Pacific Railroad's 1907 naming of the place for the Dorris brothers, ranchers who had earlier raised stock in the Little Shasta area. The valley's broad agricultural setting and the highway's north-south line still give Dorris its shape, with the Cascade country visible beyond the fields.

ATTRDrew Jacksich from San Jose, California Republic / CC BY 2.0

Two local landmarks make the city easy to remember. The Butte Valley Library provides a regular public room on West Third Street, while the city's tall flagpole remains its most recognizable vertical marker; it was once the tallest west of the Mississippi and is still the tallest west of the Rockies. Butte Valley Unified schools, city hall, the Dorris-Tulelake court branch, and the Butte Valley Museum connect civic life to the wider valley. Dorris is a northern California city where a railroad name, a long highway, and a small set of public institutions hold a farming community together.