Concow (Maidu: Koyoom Kʼawi, meaning "Meadow")[6] is an unincorporated community and census-designated place[7] (CDP) in the Sierra Nevada foothills covering eastern Butte County, California.

The original inhabitants ate salmon from the Feather River, acorns and pine nuts, venison, nō-kōm-hē-i'-nē, and other sources of food which abounded in the California foothills.

From his essence, out of his breath, he made the sun, the moon, and the countless stars, and pinned them in the blue vault of the heavens.

The Concow region is 20 miles (30 km) north of the city of Oroville (an Anglo-Hispanic compound meaning 'gold-town') and about the same distance east of the town of Chico; named for Rancho Arroyo Chico—meaning 'little creek ranch.'

Aside from governance, starting in 1828, northern trappers including Jedediah Smith, Michel Laframboise, and John Work first made contact with the Concow region Maidu.

The route did not pass directly through the present day Concow, the trail followed a series of ridgetops 10 miles to the East.

[12][13][14][15] In 1854, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis wrote California that their 'war' expenditures could not be authorized without the original bills of sale to verify the purpose was one intended by congress.

By 1862, the last of the native Concow inhabitants were starving on the cramped Round Valley with unrelated people relocated from surrounding regions.

It was the midst of the North American Civil War, and federal funds for California Reservations were no longer arriving.

[21] In the cooling weather of late September, on September 24, 1862, a combination of the poor camp conditions, forced participation in a massacre of the local Wailaki peoples,[21] warnings by local whites that they were planning to massacre the reservation inhabitants that winter,[21] and an imminent winter disaster (under the supervision of indian agent James Short Archived November 15, 2011, at the Wayback Machine[22] ) motivated a group of over 400 Maidu to leave the camp.

In the following days 611 KonKow people were murdered by a vigilante volunteer posse of 500 white men that sought to kill every non-white in Butte County.

Wells hid 50 Kon Kows in his Yankee Hill store in the foothills above the camp at Bidwell's old river crossing; the vigilante group discovered these people.

[21][24] Under a resolution passed at a mass meeting of the public at Pence Ranch on July 27[28][29][30] a group of 12 led by Thomas McDonald of Cherokee and M.H.

Wells of Yankee Hill [10] found and convinced the remaining people in the surrounding area to go to the Bidwell camp for their own safety.

Despite efforts by the soldiers and the Pence resolution mandated donations of food and shelter provisions, horses and wagons, each day those who could not make the march through the hot arid early September Sacramento Valley - where afternoon temperatures top 90 °F (32 °C) or over the 6,000 foot (1,800 m) crest of the North Coast Ranges - were left behind without food or water and were soon killed by a pack of wild boar that formed behind and followed the group; the survivors were told to stay at the Round Valley concentration camp or be shot on sight.

'[10] What became of this band is not known, the following year in August a group of 25 Kon Kow were attacked and killed after a robbery that included two murders at the Robert Workman home;[10] this became known as the Three Knolls Massacre and is seen as a smaller episode of the Mill Creek War.

[10] The current inhabitants of Concow, including a few Maidus, commonly find relics of the Maidu in the form of beads and stone tools while digging in and around their homes.

The economy of the region rose and fell with the gold rush need for supplies, the civil war demand for pine turpentine, logging, and the water way that allowed for ranching.

In 1962 a new four-lane alignment of California State Route 70 wrapped around the western side of the then proposed Lake Oroville and reconnected with the existing highway 70 at Jarbo Gap.

[42] Shortly after the fire erupted, the Butte County Sheriff's Office ordered evacuations of surrounding communities and switched to life saving operations.

[45] As of December 13, Butte County Sheriff's Department reported that at least 6 people died in Concow during the Camp Fire.

Historically the Concow region supported hunter-gatherer societies, turpentine extraction,[10] dairy farming, ranching, forestry, water supply, and in the areas outside the granite sands - Quartz reef mining and related industries.

During and after the 2008 fires, an estimated $50 million worth of marijuana was removed, indicating that the region's per-capita income is under-reported.

The 2008 fire burned most of the protective, shaded forest overstory, converting the vegetation to mostly exposed, sunny and hot chaparral.

With the destruction of most unpermitted structures and forest during the 2008 fire, the pattern of residences, commercial land use, informal and formal market industries, and recreational use has changed.