Gold Nugget Days lights up Paradise – Chico Enterprise-Record

Heather Lawther, owner of String Bead, talks with customer Stefanie Sullivan at the Paradise Gem and Mineral show in Paradise, California on Saturday April 27, 2024. (Molly Myers/Enterprise-Record)

PARADISE — Lifelong Paradise resident Cherie Brown-Spellings can’t tell how many times she’s been to the Gold Nugget Days Parade.

“I think as we get more new people it’s going to be the only thing left of our history to have like, activities like this,” Brown-Spellings said.

Gold Nugget Days is an annual Paradise festival that celebrates the discovery of a 54-pound gold nugget in 1859. Brown-Spellings’ great grandfather came to Paradise in the late 1920s as a miner and a logger, she said. Her entire life she’s been heard the legend of the gold nugget, referred to as the Dogtown nugget.

Today, Brown-Spellings’ favorite part of the parade is the honoring of the Gold Nugget Queen, although she herself has never considered running. Her favorite part of her used to be when a brigade would fire blanks from shotguns, but she said they do n’t do that anymore.

Brown-Spellings said there is a new generation moving into Paradise that is different and more welcoming.

In addition to the parade, Gold Nugget Days hosts a children’s costume contest, Melodrama, Sunday at the Museum, Donkey Derby, Highlanders and Miners Ball, and the Miss Gold Nugget Pageant. This year’s Gold Nugget Queen is Grace Buzzard.

Over 30 parade floats took to Skyway this year, said Janet Mann, docent coordinator for the Paradise Gold Nugget Museum.

Mann describes Gold Nugget Days, and Paradise as a whole, “phenomenal.”

“A lot of folks don’t realize how rich in California history this area actually is,” Mann said.

Gem Show

Another Gold Nugget Days festivity is the Paradise Gem and Mineral Show, put on by the Paradise Gem and Mineral Club, which began Saturday and will continue today from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Heather Lawther, owner of String Bead, sold a variety of gem stones and beads at the event. The most popular stones sold are probably turquoise and labradorite, while she personally favors jade, she said.

Customer Stefanie Sullivan purchased moon stone, tourmaline and labradorite from String Bead at the Gem Show. Sullivan has been taking beading classes at String Bead’s Chico location and is starting to create jewelry of her own.

Part of the Paradise Gem and Mineral show included a scavenger hunt. Participants had to venture through the gem show looking for different kinds of rocks that each had a number and a word on them. Once they found all the words and put them in order by number they completed the secret phrase: “Pretty rocks are like potato chips, one is never enough.”

Patty Forero, member of the Paradise Gem and Mineral Club, said the gem show is their biggest event of the year. Although she is passionate about gems, she said she could never pick a favorite.

“How can you choose? That would be like choosing a favorite child,” Forero said.

The gem and mineral show serves as the main fundraiser for the Paradise Gem and Mineral Club, said club vice president Mike Eggleston.

Eggleston also can’t pick a favorite stone, but said his favorite part about working with stones is venturing out to find them, and educating youth.

The club offered a lot of support to the Paradise community after the Camp Fire, Eggleston said. Many people who collected gems lost their collections in the fire, he said.

“You cannot imagine the beauty that was burned up in that fire… You could find a piece of obsidian which you think, ‘OK, this came out of volcano.’ You go to pick it up and it would crumble,” Eggleston said.

The club offered people something to hold on to and look forward to after the Camp Fire, Eggleston said. Eggleston thinks what drives the community of the Paradise Gem and Mineral Club is how accepting everyone is.

“It’s nondenominational… there’s no pressure to be something other than who you are.” Eggleston said.

Eggleston has multiple family members in the club with him including his 14-year-old granddaughter Lauryn Atkinson.

“You make a lot of friends,” Atkinson said. “It’s a community for sure.”