Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Big Bend, CA

Big Bend is a census-designated place in Shasta County named for a major bend in the Pit River, in the valley also known as the Madesi Valley.

For several thousand years Big Bend was the heart of the territory of the Madesi band of Pit River Native Americans, one of nine Achomawi-speaking bands, whose main village of Mah-dess' stood on the north bank of the Pit River east of Kosk Creek.

Because the Big Bend country is so remote, the Madesi were among the last Indigenous peoples in California to be pushed out of their ancestral homeland, holding on until settlers and military forces arrived in the 1850s and 1860s.

Euro-American settlers first called the town Elena in 1890 and then Henderson in 1906 before settling on Big Bend in 1922, building a log hotel, post office and saloon above the hot springs that drew visitors seeking healing mineral baths.

Big Bend boomed in the late 1930s when PG&E built the Pit 5 hydroelectric dam and powerhouse, bringing thousands of workers, including around 2,000 hard-rock tunnel miners, then faded again by the late 1940s when construction ended.

Big Bend's population has fallen steadily from 149 in 2000 to 102 in 2010 and just 79 in the 2020 census, when it had 43 households averaging only 1.84 people and a median age of 52.8.

Big Bend is known across Northern California for its geothermal hot springs along the Pit River, including the Big Bend Hot Springs and Kosk Creek Hot Springs.

A geothermal hot well in town is used to heat the K-8 Indian Springs School, the community swimming pool and the community greenhouse.

The Pit River at Big Bend is the longest tributary of the Sacramento River and one of only three rivers that cross the Cascade Range to reach the Pacific; it offers prized fishing for McCloud River redband trout and occasional Class 4 and 5 whitewater releases.

Overlooking Big Bend is Chalk Mountain, whose natural slide of white diatomaceous earth resembles a bison and is locally called the White Buffalo, and nearby Iron Canyon Reservoir in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest offers camping, canoeing and trout fishing.