Editing Redding, California (section)

== Etymology ==
During the [[California Gold Rush|Gold Rush]], the area that now comprises Redding was called Poverty Flats.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Donion |first=Preston |date=October 4, 2022 |title=City of Redding turns 135 years old |url=https://krcrtv.com/news/local/happy-135th-birthday-redding |access-date=October 6, 2022 |work=KRCR |language=en }}</ref> In 1868 the first land agent for the [[Central Pacific Railroad]], a former Sacramento politician named [[Benjamin B. Redding|Benjamin Bernard Redding]], bought property in Poverty Flats on behalf of the railroad so that it could build a northern terminus there. In the process of building the terminus, the railroad also built a town in the same area, which they named Redding in honor of Benjamin Redding.

In 1874, there was a dispute over the name by local legislators and it was changed for a time to Reading, in order to honor [[Pierson B. Reading]], who arrived in the area in 1843, owned the Buenaventura land grant on which Redding sits, and had died only a few years before, in 1868. The name was officially changed back to Redding by 1880.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://shastahistorical.org/how-redding-got-its-name/ |title=How Redding got its Name |access-date=August 25, 2017 |archive-date=March 28, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160328123650/http://shastahistorical.org/how-redding-got-its-name/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Peterson |first1=Edward |title=In the Shadow of the Mountain, a Short History of Shasta County, California |date=1964 |publisher=Edward Peterson |location=Redding, California |pages=passim |url=https://northernposts.com/in-the-shadow-of-the-mountain-a-short-history-of-shasta-county/ |access-date=July 21, 2020 }}</ref>