Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Gridley, CA

Gridley is named for George W. Gridley, a wool grower and grain farmer who settled a 960-acre home ranch west of the townsite in the 1850s and became one of the largest landowners in Butte County.

Gridley was established in 1870 when the Oregon and California Railroad was built north from Marysville, and the railroad reached Chico on July 2, 1870.

Gridley was incorporated on November 23, 1905, the same year a July fire nearly destroyed its business district for the second time in two decades.

Gridley became an unlikely Mormon enclave - drawn by a California Irrigated Land Company campaign called The Place Where Crops Never Fail, Latter-day Saint families began arriving from Rexburg, Idaho, in November 1906, and by 1912 they had built a 1,000-seat chapel in Gridley, the largest LDS meetinghouse west of Salt Lake City at the time.

Gridley had a population of 7,421 at the 2020 census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 2020 census counted 2,446 households in Gridley with an average household size of 2.95 people, and nearly half of Gridley's residents - 49% - are Hispanic or Latino.

Gridley's motto is The Small Town that Loves Company, and its official nickname is A Distinguished California City.

Gridley students attend Gridley High School and the other campuses of the Gridley Unified School District, including Sycamore Middle School and McKinley and Wilson elementary schools.

The 8,400-acre Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, about 10 miles southwest of Gridley, is one of the most intensively used and developed wetlands in the entire Pacific Flyway, drawing huge flocks of migratory waterfowl.

After the devastating 2018 Camp Fire destroyed nearby Paradise, 400 temporary modular housing units called the Gridley Camp Fire Community were erected at a city-owned industrial park in Gridley to shelter displaced residents.