Marysville

Marysville is the seat of Yuba County, and boasts the honorary title of “California’s Oldest Little City.” Located at the confluence of the Feather and Yuba rivers about 40 minutes north of Sacramento, Marysville has retained its unique historic character, especially in the downtown where a number of Gold Rush-era landmarks survive. Marysville once had the country’s second-largest Chinatown and, inside a building that dates to 1858, this distinctive aspect of the town’s past is commemorated at the Chinese American Museum of Northern California. The first temple that Chinese residents built-in Marysville was destroyed but the Bok Kai Temple, the 1880 successor to the original structure, still stands and is one of America’s oldest Taoist temples. Marysville may seem like an unlikely sports town but there’s plenty of action here. Head over to Marysville Raceway for winged 360 sprint car and hobby stocks competitions on the quarter-mile clay oval. In September there is an annual Marysville Stampede Rodeo which began in 1933.