Something amazing happened in Chico 120 years ago this month.

On July 10, 1905, Annie Bidwell deeded 1,903 acres of her land to the City of Chico to be used as a public park. Mrs. Bidwell said she was acting on her husband’s wishes before he died. John Bidwell died in 1900. John and Annie Bidwell called one area of Bidwell Park Vallombrosa because of the similarity to a famous Italian wooded resort by that name near Florence, Italy. The strip of land running along either side of Big Chico Creek was named Vallombrosa. (Vallombrosa Avenue today.)

On July 14, 1905, Susan B. Anthony arrived in Chico from Portland, Oregon. She was met at the train station by Annie Bidwell and stayed at the Bidwell Mansion as Annie Bidwell’s guest.

On July 18, 1905, a formal dedication of Bidwell Park took place, with Annie Bidwell presenting the park to the City of Chico. Susan B. Anthony was the keynote guest speaker during the dedication of Bidwell Park.

She addressed the crowd with this message: “How can you, men with a proper sense of justice, say and manifest that Mrs. Bidwell to whom you now give your gratitude and who has given you such a great gift, is beneath you, not your equal? Yet, you do say she is not your equal when you refuse her the right that you possess to vote at the polls for the uplifting of society and the governing of the park which she has given you.”

Susan Brownell Anthony was born on Feb. 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. She was the founder and president of the National Women’s Suffrage Association and is best known for and associated with the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution which granted women the right to vote. She spent her life fighting for equal rights for women and worked tirelessly to obtain the right for women to vote in this country.

During the presidential election on November 5, 1872, Anthony cast her vote in Rochester, New York. Two weeks later, she was arrested for voting illegally. During the two-day trial in June 1873, she was indicted, tried and convicted for voting illegally, and was sentenced to pay a fine of $100, plus court costs. She described the trial as “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded.” *This presidential election was between Republican Ulysses S. Grant running for his second term against Democrat Horace Greeley. President Grant was re-elected.

Anthony had sought help to have women included in the efforts to pass the Fourteenth Amendment (giving rights to all persons born or naturalized in the United States) which passed on June 8, 1866, and the Fifteenth Amendment (giving African American men the right to vote) which passed on February 3, 1870. Both amendments left women out.

Anthony died on March 13, 1906 in Rochester, New York. Her valiant, lifelong efforts were not in vain. The Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was passed on Aug. 6, 1920.

Last year, I took two of my grandchildren to the Bidwell Mansion. In spite of today’s preoccupation with electronics and video games, Luke and Gwen were excited to visit the historic landmark. They were interested and attentive during the guided tour of the mansion. When we entered the library which was on the ground floor, I immediately noticed four books by Susan B. Anthony on one of the shelves. There were four volumes of “A History of Woman Suffrage” with handwritten personal notes to Annie Bidwell from Susan B. Anthony inside each of the volumes, dated Aug. 20, 1905. Grandson Luke asked me, “Who is Susan B. Anthony?”

The Chico Arts and Culture Foundation (CACF) was established on Nov. 1, 1955, as a non-profit organization to support and promote art in Chico. To honor Anthony, the CACF in 2007 had a luminary bench made to commemorate her and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The bench was placed in the 100 block of W. 7th Street. It has since been removed from this location and is in the City of Chico Public Works Yard for repairs.