The City of Oroville invested thousands of dollars into new public artwork in 2021 in an effort to bring new patrons to its historic downtown. It’s yielded the county’s now-largest mural that ventures to keep the city’s rich locomotive past alive.

Saturday, the Oroville Arts Commission dedicated four art projects, created by local artists, that were the result of a nearly $70,000 investment by the commission in May 2021. The loudest piece (visually speaking) towers over the intersection of Lincoln and Bird Streets.

It’s Butte County’s largest mural, Oroville Railyard Mural, which depicts the late-Oroville roundhouse that serviced locomotives that once called the city home for over a century. Oroville artists Ted Hanson and Frank Wilson created the 146-foot wide and 18 to 25-foot tall piece of art after more than a year of research and production.

“We studied the wall. What can we possibly paint on this? It's got three architectural elements. It's got these columns sticking out,” says Wilson, standing next to Hanson in front of the mural Saturday morning. “We were 72 years old at the time. It was physically exhausting.”

Separated by concrete columns made to look like distressed wood, five alcoves each house a locomotive of a major railroad that once anchored operations in Oroville. Two of these physical trains remain on display inside Hewitt Park, while the others are spread out across different museums outside of the county.

The “labor of love,” as the duo calls the mural, required over half a year of research into each individual train to mirror historical accuracy onto the downtown wall. Trips to out-of-town museums, conversations with locomotive historians and hours of sifting through photos and literature later, the relevancy of a “train mural” became clear in this city.

"Oroville is a hub. It fed all the way up through Chico, Red Bluff, Redding. It went west through Gridley over to the coastal range. It went out to Portola. It was the link between the valley and the mountain community. There were spurs that ran all the way to Reno and from Reno all over Los Angeles, to Utah, to Salt Lake City,” says Wilson. “That distinction was shared by only two other cities in the whole state of California. Sacramento and Los Angeles were also home to five locomotive companies.

"Nobody's wanting to sit on the track and take a picture of a train coming towards them,” adds Hanson. “A lot of the photos in the history books at the museum were all three-quarters, from the side. So, trying to get a frontal view so that we can do this, that was the challenge."

Additionally, they say a perfect piece came with public pressure.

"I had no idea how many train buffs are in Oroville,” says Hanson. “A lot of people here grew up with steam trains and the Zephyr, and so they would come watch us. Every day, they'd park and watch us and I'd watch guys go right up to the mural after I painted the nuts and bolts on the train and they were actually pointing (and counting them)."

Through the rain, heat, smoke and winds that the duo worked through, sometimes raised 25 feet in the air, they say they are most proud of the lasting legacy the mural leaves behind about the city’s history that those simply strolling the streets of downtown will have the opportunity to learn about for the foreseeable future.

"Several people said, ‘you guys are doing a great job on the train, are you going to paint over all of that old wood too?’ And Ted would tell them, ‘That's concrete. We painted that to look like old wood.’ And that's when I knew we had done a good job,” says Wilson.

The mural can be viewed at 1770 Bird St. A "steam locomotive legend" sits to the left of the mural with information about each locomotive's history with Oroville.