Spenceville Wildlife Area
The Spenceville Wildlife Area is an wildlife preserve managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. It is located in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, within Nevada County and Yuba County of northern California.
History
The Spenceville Wildlife Area contains the site of the former town of Spenceville, a 19th‑century ranching, farming and copper‑mining community. Early settlers were ranchers and farmers; in the early 1860s copper ore was discovered on Purtyman’s Ranch and the Well Lead Mine and surrounding ranch became the town of Spenceville. Copper mining expanded with the Last Chance Mine, and by the mid‑1870s the town had a post office, three general stores, a hotel, a school, a Methodist church and a Templar lodge, with about four hundred residents. Mining declined after World War I and Spenceville was abandoned; during World War II the U.S. military acquired much of the area for training. Following the war, part of the land became Beale Air Force Base and part became the Spenceville Wildlife Area; major cleanup of mine waste was completed in 2013.In June 2025 the Nevada County Board of Supervisors designated Kneebone Ranch and Cemetery within the wildlife area as County Historical Landmark NEV 25‑06, recognizing the Kneebone family’s 20‑mule freight‑wagon business and burial site.
Geography
The preserve is approximately east of the town of Marysville and Beale Air Force Base in the eastern Sacramento Valley. The elevation of the area varies from.Natural history
Spenceville is a foothill oak woodland of Blue oak (Quercus douglasii) and Foothill gray pine (Pinus sabiniana), and a grassland habitat. It is notable for many species of native birds and wildflowers, including the California endemic Yellow mariposa lily (Calochortus luteus).The geology of the Spenceville area is part of the Smartville Block formed during the Middle Jurassic epoch 200 million years ago. The Smartville Block is a part of the California Mother Lode for gold, and consequently Spenceville has had its share of mining activity. Cleanup from copper and zinc mining continues to this day.
The area was originally home to the Maidu and Nisenan Native Americans and evidence of their grinding holes and lodge pits still exist.