Imagine it’s the 1800’s.  Long before airplanes, automobiles, even railroads. The only means of mass transit was the riverways.  Certainly a horse could get you over the trails, but the trip would be long and difficult, without the means to carry large loads. So travel by the masses with done so using the twists and turns of the rivers.

People would take them as far as they would go. And Marysville was that last stop up the river, all the way from San Francisco Bay. From the east, people moved by wagon train, over the mountainous terrain.

It was a deadly and difficult journey, frought with endless dangers.  But thos of better means would journey by ship to San Francisco, and then by steamboat up the rivers to the end of the line. Marysville.

Even miners could traverse back and forth from gold filled hills to the Bay Area. So one of the main reasons that Marysville grew into such a large city was because of the rivers. Two main ones. The Yuba on the south and the Feather river bounding on it’s west. A great book to read is “Riverboats of Northern California by Paul C. Trimble.